


Limit

by minijhi



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, Video Game AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 21:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2555729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minijhi/pseuds/minijhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a secret facility on the top of a hill somewhere in the middle of nowhere, there is a dangerous game to be played, and everyone needs a player two.</p><p>Press START to begin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever since I started writing Kuroken, I couldn't get the 'them in a video game AU' out of my head, and I knew this had to be written. Why it turned out so absolutely miserable though, I can't really say.  
> Presenting Kuroo and Kenma in a video game as Fighter and Sacrifice. The Loveless, Sword Art, Battle Royale, Hunter x Hunter, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Inception, Narnia and Street Fighter (lol) AU, although you need none of those references to understand the story.

Kuroo sits at Kenma’s dining table, rifling through the day’s mission statements and reports.  Newspapers, he would have called them, six months ago. But newspapers had always been biased and flighty things:  the reports they now receive every morning on their doorsteps are hard and cold facts, endlessly preaching the New Japan.

A college in Osaka has closed down and all the unassigned students and staff have been posted to work on the rural cleaning-up project.  Two more shopping malls have been turned into government offices.  The factories are still hiring, and everyone above the age of ten is expected to get themselves assigned somewhere.

Speaking of assignments, Kuroo directs his gaze to the couch, where his best friend is lying upside down, tapping away at a handheld game.  When the New Japan Rule had taken over six months ago, Kuroo, like most of Japan, had his life completely reorganized and dictated by strangers he had never met. As government officers even in the old Tokyo, Kuroo’s parents had been one of the first to be locked down on. As a result, a week into the New Rule, Kuroo had been assigned to a large factory downtown Tokyo putting together mechanical parts for machinery.  He’d worked there ever since, and in the past six months had slowly climbed the ladder, now supervising, rather than getting his hands slimy with grease and being burnt by faulty MIG welders. 

Kenma, on the other hand, had slipped right under the radar.  Six months in and Kenma hadn’t even gotten assigned yet, unless you counted the brief stint at the local supermarket, which Kuroo didn’t, because Kenma had gotten himself fired (intentionally, Kuroo is sure) after a mere two days.  Without an assignment ID card, you technically couldn’t do much, but that didn’t bother Kenma.  He got Kuroo to buy him games, his parents kept him fed, and as their school hadn’t been forced to implement an assignment-card-check upon entry, a small percentage of students were still going to school ‘illegally’. So while the whole world was in disarray, Kenma maintained almost the same lifestyle he had before the New Rule. 

Kuroo tugs absently at his hair, still wild and unruly, and reads the unassigned number statistics at the bottom of the day’s report. Two-hundred-and-thirteen unassigned people remaining in Tokyo.  A tiny number. 

“Kenma.”  Kuroo says, eyeing the other prefectures’ numbers.  “You better get some work.  They’re going to find you, soon.”

The blond boy just makes a noise of discontentment and sinks lower in the couch.

“Kenma.  You’re lucky for even have lasted this long.”  Kuroo points out.  “Look, I’m just saying, it’s better that you pick a job you like, right now, than have them assign one to you, alright?

“I don’t like any of the jobs.”  Kenma says, voice petulant.

Kuroo gives an exasperated sigh.  “Kenma, this is important.  For all I care, you can get a job playing video games, as long as it’s an assignment.”

For the first time, Kenma’s eyes pull away from his game, and he looks at Kuroo.  “Is there one?  I wouldn’t mind.”

Kuroo drops onto the couch beside Kenma, picking up the volleyball under the table and cradles it in his lap.  “I’m serious.  You’re going to be in a lot of trouble if they find you now.”

The clicks and beeps of the game’s sound effects is the only answer for a long minute.

“Okay.”  Kenma says.  “I’ll get one this week.  I’m about to finish this game, anyway.”

 

-

 

Monday morning passes with no signs of Kenma looking for an assignment.  Kuroo drops hints everywhere he goes, from the flyers he’d retrieved from Kenma’s mailbox on his way to pick up the boy from school, to reading out the recruiting lists plastered all over the school corridor as he trails Kenma to his class. He keeps this up for two consecutive days, and sings a quiet victory whenever Kenma’s eyes flicker towards a certain poster that Kuroo just read out.

However, by the time Tuesday evening rolls around, Kuroo’s pretty sure Kenma has no intention of getting himself assigned, and scowls as he watches the boy continue to play his handheld game, snuggled comfortably in the window seat when Kuroo drops by after dinner.  Anger and worry is brewing under Kuroo’s calm demeanor, and he says barely any words before settling down at Kenma’s empty desk to do his homework.  Kenma stays on the window seat and keeps playing. 

It’s past midnight before Kenma finishes the game and flops onto his bed.  Kuroo looks up from his math question, but doesn’t bother chiding him to brush his teeth or get changed.  Fifteen minutes later, he hears Kenma’s gentle breathing that indicates the boy has fallen asleep.

Kuroo snags the game off the window seat with a sudden, overwhelming rush of fury, and drops it into his bag.  Packing his books, he leaves the room and turns out the light behind him.

On Wednesday, Kuroo doesn’t wait to walk Kenma to school.  Game console still in his bag, he takes the longer road to school, passes by the ocean and with a quick snap of the wrist, flings the device straight into the dark water. He feels better, but only by a small margin, and soon that feeling turns into nausea.

Kenma runs into him after school, expression confused, but doesn’t say anything.  They walk home, one behind the other, but even the best of imaginations can’t pretend that they are walking home together.  Kenma watches him quietly, but says nothing, and with the absence of the sounds of Kenma’s typical game, the walk home is frigid.

When they finally part ways at Kenma’s house, Kuroo kicks at the pile of work flyers sitting on Kenma’s doorstep.

“Kuroo?”  Kenma says hesitantly.

“Don’t talk to me until you’ve gotten yourself assigned.”  Kuroo says, and leaves Kenma standing in the mess.

He goes home and lies in his bed, feeling sick and angry, both at himself and at Kenma.  It’s not been the easiest to deal with Kenma since the change in regime. Some might argue that Kenma had been difficult enough to deal with before the takeover, but Kuroo had been okay with Kenma like that, back then.  Now he’s just worried all the time. 

He’s heard stories of people being taken away from their homes and sent to different prefectures to do slave work. He’s heard of children in the more rural areas of Japan being murdered in broad daylight just because they refused to work, or because they had been bad at it.  Kuroo personally didn’t know anyone this had happened to, and hell if he was going to let Kenma be the first.

Kuroo walks slowly past Kenma’s house the next day. He’s still not completely apologetic—he wants Kenma to get assigned, but at the same time he’s also sorry for having snapped at the younger boy.  However, he sees no signs of Kenma, not at school, nor on the road.

At the factory, a couple of new assignments have come in.  One of them is as young as twelve, and the kid is jumpy and terrified at every task. By mid-afternoon, the boy’s hands are cut and bleeding from meddling with machine parts, his soft skin unused to the hard work.  Against his better judgment, Kuroo takes the kid to the infirmary, watches him sniffle as the nurse bandages his hands, and then sends him home for the day. All the while, Kuroo can’t get Kenma out of his head.

By the time Friday rolls around, life has become one neverending headache.  After the incident with the new kid, he’d barely gotten any sleep, and the whole school is overly cheerful about something.  Everyone is buzzing with energy and gossip, and Kuroo just wants to go back home.  He sinks into his seat, hunched over, trying to massage the pain out of his head. All the while, voices sweep over him, saying things like ‘I can’t believe it’ and ‘what an honour’ and ‘it’s really quite terrifying’.

What exactly is unbelievable, an honour and terrifying all at the same time, Kuroo doesn’t catch.  He remains unaware for at least ten minutes, head sunk onto his desk, before one of his classmates flounces over.

“Congratulations!”  the boy says jubilantly, slapping Kuroo on the back. “What’s it like being friends with a celebrity?  Who is his Fighter, do you know?” 

A girl laughs at the boy generously. “Why?  Are you thinking of applying?  Five minutes of fame?  That’s all you’ll last, Kaneda-kun.” 

A third classmate shushes the girl. “It’s not a joke, Hitomi. Don’t say that in front of Kuroo-kun.”

Kuroo groans at the sudden crowd.  “What are you guys talking about?” he asks.

The first boy shakes his head.  “Kozume-kun, of course!  What else would I be talking about?” 

Kuroo blinks.  “Kenma?” 

Their professor steps into class, and the group scatters quickly, but not before someone pats Kuroo on the shoulder and whispers, “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine!  Let him know we’re proud of him, okay?”

As the professor takes attendance, Kuroo’s headache just grows.  When it reaches Kuroo’s name, he grabs his bag and stumbles out of his seat.

“I’m uhh… I’m not feeling well.”  he says quickly, and darts out of the classroom.

 

-

 

In the library, Kuroo pulls out the reports from the past few days, the ones he’s neglected ever since he started attempting to get Kenma assigned.  The library is quiet and cold, and Kuroo crouches down by the stack of reports, flipping open every page, scanning the news for anything that might relate to Kenma. 

He goes through Monday to Wednesday’s papers finding nothing, and stops abruptly when he pulls out Thursday’s report. On the very first page, there’s a printed notice on the bottom, typewritten font reading ‘High school students required for game beta testing. Assignment briefs posted to school offices.  Interested students please enquire within.’  He pulls out Friday’s report with shaking hands, and finds nothing more. 

Game beta testing.  Kuroo shoves all the reports back into their respective files, sucking in a noisy gulp of air.  The air-conditioning of the library is making his skin clammy.

 _“Interested students please enquire within.”_   Kuroo takes off towards the school’s administration department at a slow jog, which turned into a sprint as the conversations of his classmates from that morning echoed throughout his head.  ‘Terrifying’, ‘minutes of fame’ and ‘not a joke’ are all words he can remember being used to refer to this mystery game.

He bursts into the office, swallowing hard, his throat too tight.

“Please.”  He says to the sea of office faces staring at him.  “Can you tell me about the beta testing game job?”

 

-

 

Nekomata-sensei rises from his cubicle in the corner of the office.

“Let me handle this.”  he says to the startled office girl, taking the file from her. With a surprisingly strong hand, he guides Kuroo out into the hallway, into an adjacent, unoccupied conference room.

“Sensei, please tell me, is Kenma—is he one of the players?” Kuroo says desperately, even before they can take a seat.  Nekomata forces him down onto a chair and sits next to him.  Kuroo stares down at the file, but closed, it reveals nothing.

“Sensei, please.”  Kuroo repeats.

Air whooshes through the vents as the heating rattles to life.  “He is.” Nekomata confirms. “Please sit still, Kuroo-kun, and let me explain.”

“The New Rule is developing a game system that builds both mental and physical strength.  Not much about the game is known yet, but that it involves players defeating one another, completing quests and climbing level after level to reach the top, as you would expect from a typical video game.”

Kuroo nodded.  “It’s a game, though?  A video game?” 

Nekomata handles the folder carefully, pulling out a sheet of paper.  He places it on top of the file, then clasps his hands over it, effectively covering most of the text. 

“We have reason to believe that it is bigger than a mere video game.  For one, the rewards are astronomical—the team becomes an icon, a legend for the New Rule. The players will be allowed to be unassigned save jobs related to the game.  They will be given royalties, fame, extravagances.”

“How many people win?”  Kuroo asks, frowning.

“Six, we believe, for the moment.”

“And what happens to the people who lose?” Kuroo asks.

Nekomata does not reply, and the truth sinks in. There will be no people who lose. None left alive, at any rate.

“Don’t looks like that.”  Nekomata says sharply.  “There is no indication that the other players don’t just go back to their routine lives.”

Kuroo laughs, empty.  “If that’s the case, then why is everyone talking about the game like it’s the next Battle Royale?  Why is everyone trying to convince me that Kenma will be okay? Why is everyone so reluctant to sign up, if losing simply means _going back to everyday life_?" 

Kuroo sinks back into his chair.  “Why would he sign up?”  he asks.  “What the hell was he thinking?”

Nekomata shakes his head.  “Kenma was… recruited, you could say. Every school has to send at least one team, and the headmaster decided that Kenma has the …best odds.”

There is the word that had been bothering Kuroo. Teams.  Team.  His confusion must show on his face, for Nekomata proceeds to elaborate.

“Each team consists of two people, based on the Fighter and Sacrifice system.”

Fighter and Sacrifice system.  Kuroo’s stomach churns.  That was how the new soldiers had taken over the Old Japan, it was the system that had enabled the takeover of the Old Japan. By pairing up soldiers and dividing them into Fighter and Sacrifice, the Sacrifices took all the damage during a battle, leaving the Fighter perfectly able to fight.  How it worked exactly was not clear to Kuroo, but he remembered clearly watching on tv, the way the Fighters would move forward, taking bullets aimed to kill and not even faltering, undefeatable as they surrounded the government building and forced their way in. Around them, their Sacrifices dropped like flies.

Kaneda’s voice from earlier that morning resounds in Kuroo’s head.

_“Do you know who his Fighter is?”_

Kenma is a Sacrifice.  Of course he is.

The radiator is noisy in the background, but Kuroo’s skin is crawling.  He reaches for the folder.

“We can apply, right?”  he asks, voice rough.

“Kenma already has a Fighter.”  says Nekomata.

An unknown feeling erupts deep within Kuroo, and he grabs Nekomata-sensei’s arm in disbelief.

“Who?”  he demands.

“I am not at liberty to say.”  Nekomata says, and his eyes are clouded with concern and sympathy.  “Go back to your own job, Kuroo.  Kenma has made his decision.”

Kuroo shakes his head numbly.  “No.”  he says, and it feels like someone else is speaking.   Kuroo finds himself disturbingly calm. He stands, and holds out his hand for the papers, gaze unwavering.  “Give me the papers.  I will change his mind.”

At long last, Nekomata hands over the folder with an air of resignation.  Kuroo bows deeply, clutching the folder close and heads for the exit.

“Kuroo, don’t make any stupid decisions.” Nekomata-sensei calls after him. Quieter, just before the door is shut behind Kuroo, he thinks he hears a weary, “I don’t want to lose the both of you.”

 

-

 

Kuroo leaves the school and calls in sick for his job. He’s built up a respectable enough reputation that one off day won’t count against him that much. He heads straight to Kenma’s house, before realizing that, unless the boy skipped school too, Kenma wouldn’t be home.

Sinking onto the front steps of Kenma’s porch, Kuroo dials Kenma’s number from memory.  The phone rings for several moments, and Kuroo half wonders if Kenma’s just ignoring him.  It wouldn't be the first time.  He tries again, and again. Presently, the line clicks. Kuroo sucks in a breath of relief.

“Kenma, I want to go with you.  Let me be your Fighter.”  He says within seconds of Kenma picking up.

“I already have someone.”  Kenma answers after a pause.  His voice sounds foreign, and Kuroo realizes that it’s been three days since he’s talked to Kenma, the longest they’ve gone without at least texting once in a long time.

“Who?”  Kuroo asks, and then changes his mind before Kenma can hang up. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll ask later—Kenma, just tell your Fighter that you don’t need him.  I’ll sign up.  I want to go with you.” 

There is a rustle on the other end. “I’m in class, Kuroo.”

Kuroo rubs a hand across his face.  “Skip.”  He says, which is completely unlike him.  “I’m at your house.”

Kenma doesn’t say anything.  Kuroo sighs. 

“I’ll see you tonight then.”

“Not today.”  Kenma says.  “I’m meeting my Fighter after class today.  We need to go through the forms.” 

“No, Kenma.”  Kuroo says, tightening his grip on the phone.  “No.  Please don’t.  _I’m_ your Fighter.”

“No, you’re not.”  Kenma says quietly, and the call ends.

No amount of calling back gets Kenma to pick up, and when he goes over to Kenma’s house again after class has let out, still nobody is home.

 

-

 

Saturday arrives.  Kuroo doesn’t know how they’ve come to this, Kenma making him lunch while he sits at the table, flopped down on the wooden surface and spinning his phone in circles.

“I told you to get assigned.”  Kuroo says, curling his toes into the soft rug beneath his feet.  His feet are cold. “Oh, Kenma.”

Kenma shrugs a shoulder, reaching for the bowls in an upper kitchen cabinet.  “It could be worse.  It’s a basic level-up-and-fight-system game.”

“Basic?”  Kuroo echoes incredulously.  He stops the momentum of his phone with the palm of his hand.  “Have you read the brief?

“I play games all the time.  This is no different, Kuroo.”  Kenma says.

Kuroo kneads his fist into the table. “You’re going into a life-and-death game.  It is different." 

Kenma just makes a quiet sound of neither agreement nor protest.

“Who is your Fighter?”  Kuroo asks again, sitting up.  He’s fully prepared to force the information out of Kenma, there’s no way he’s going to let Kenma into the game without even the name of who he is losing Kenma to.

Kenma places a bowl of noodles in front of Kuroo, and Kuroo grabs the thin wrist.

“Kenma.”  he repeats sternly.  “Who is your Fighter?”

Golden cat-eyes survey him, and Kuroo tightens his grip.  He can feel the bones beneath Kenma’s skin, and somehow, the first thought in his mind is how easily he could snap it, how easily someone else could break it. The thought makes Kuroo sick and he lets go. 

“Haiba Lev.”  Kenma says.

It takes a moment for Kuroo to understand what Kenma is talking about.  Then—

“LEV?”  Kuroo repeats, jealousy and disbelief rushing through his body. “Are you crazy? Lev would get you killed!”

Kenma narrows his eyes, and turns away to ladle himself a bowl of noodles.

Even in his agitated state, Kuroo notices his own carefully made bowl, and sets it aside so he won’t accidentally knock it over. “Lev, Kenma?  he breathes.  “Haiba Lev?  I know he’s got potential, but he’s a wildcard!  He doesn’t think, he doesn’t know you—Kenma, you’re going into a life and death situation with _him_?” 

“Can you stop saying life-and-death?” Kenma asks.  “It’s overdramatic.”

Kuroo half-snarls. 

“Out of everyone who goes in the game, only six people come out alive, and you think I’m being overdramatic?  Has it occurred to you that you might be taking this way too lightly, like you do with everything else?” 

Kenma tenses, and if this had been any other day, Kuroo would have stopped talking.  But today is not like any other day.  Kuroo is up to here with frustration, and seeing Kenma go about as though nothing is wrong makes him absolutely furious.  Kenma’s capable of a lot, if he would just try, but he doesn’t.  Doesn’t ever. 

“It’s not the same Japan we grew up in, Kenma! You’re fucking representing the school in one of the biggest events since the takeover, and you’re not even trying to win it!”

He grabs the stack of papers sitting at the corner of the table, yanking out the terms and conditions sheet that Kenma has signed and dated.  Scanning through the yellow form quickly, he reads aloud, “…agree to perform the duty to the best of my abilities… understand that a lack of initiative may result in severe consequences and take full responsibility… terms and conditions may change at any point subject to discretion of the game developers.”

He throws the papers down in front of Kenma. “Did you even read this? ‘Lack of initiative may result in severe consequences’?  It is a life-and-death situation, and they own you, Kenma.  You signed it, and they own you now.” 

Kuroo feels like he’s being ripped apart. “Let me be your Fighter.” He says softly, almost pleading. “I’ll make a better Fighter for you than Lev would.” 

Kenma ignores him.  He nudges the bowl of noodles towards Kuroo, which Kuroo in turn pays no attention to.

“You’re going to die there if you go without me.” Kuroo says brokenly. “Kenma, please, _please_." 

“And you’re going to die if you go with me.” Kenma says. 

Kuroo’s blood instantly goes cold.  He hates this, hates how the entire week has been a rollercoaster, hates how when he looks at Kenma, all he sees is unattainable gold. Looking up to meet Kenma’s eyes slowly, he says, “Is this what it’s about?  You don’t want me in the game because you don’t want me to die?”

“You said it yourself.  It’s a dead end game, Kuroo.”  Kenma says.  He busies himself with his noodles, although he doesn’t take a bite.

“I said life-or-death.  It's only death if you lose, and you’ll lose if you take Haiba Lev. That’s all I’m saying.”

Kenma doesn't look up.

“So you don’t want to take me because you don’t expect to win?”  Kuroo asks, temper flaring. “You’re telling me you’re giving up?  You’re not even going to try?”

Kenma shoves away from the table and stands. “Of course I’m going to try. But I don’t want you there. You don’t need to be. There are so many other things out here you could be helping out with.  You don’t need to go with me.”

“I go wherever you go, Kenma, when has that not been the case?”  Fingers grip the edge of the table tightly.  Kuroo’s knuckles, if he would look down, are white.

“Tell me you don’t think that together, we stand a chance of winning.  Tell me that I don’t make you a stronger team.”  Kuroo says, and his voice is dangerously low.

“I don’t want you there.”  Kenma says, turning away so Kuroo can’t see his expression.

Kuroo grabs the younger boy’s shoulders, spinning him around.  “That’s not what I asked and you know it, Kenma." 

“I don’t care what you asked!”  Kenma shouts.  “You’re not going!”

The empty pot that Kenma had been cooking the noodles in clatters to the floor as Kenma yanks himself out of Kuroo’s grasp and the momentum spins him straight into the cupboard door.  Kenma drops to the floor beside the pot, and glares at Kuroo, furious, breathing loud in the sudden quiet.

“Why are you so unwilling to let me die, but so willing to let me lose you?”  Kuroo asks, voice cracking with every syllable.  “How can you not know, that to me, those are the same things?”

“Stop it, Kuroo—" 

“Fine!  If you’re going to be such an idiot about this, then by all means, take him! But don’t for a moment think that I believe you think Haiba Lev is a better match for you than I am!” Kuroo snarls.

Kenma stares at Kuroo, then drops his gaze down to the ground.

“Fuck.”  Kuroo mutters, the taste in his mouth bitter.  “I’m out of here.”  He says roughly, and storms out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

 

-

 

For the second time that week, Kuroo finds himself lying in bed, completely overwhelmed by his emotions.  He doesn’t know what to think anymore. It’s different, knowing that Kenma cares, but both result in the same unbearable pain.  Kuroo turns over, curling into his pillow, kneading a fist into it.

Haiba Lev.  Kuroo pictures the first-year, hanging over Kenma and chatting excitedly, eager to learn new tricks and diving recklessly into each one of them.  It’s not that Lev isn’t capable, but Kuroo can’t trust anyone with Kenma but himself, especially not with something like this.  Knowing, now, that Kenma’s putting his own life as well as Lev’s in risk just to protect Kuroo leaves a sick feeling in Kuroo’s gut.  The thought repeats itself over and over in Kuroo’s head, and he kicks at his blankets, then flings his pillow across the room, sitting up and then crumbling, burying his face into his bedsheet.

Clear as a flash, Kuroo sees Kenma’s eyes, wide and hurt as he left, and curses.  He pushes out of bed, pulls on his jacket and slowly puts on his shoes again, buying time before he goes back to face Kenma so he can think about his next move. It doesn’t work, and despite the three-minute walk to Kenma’s house feeling like the longest road he’s ever taken, Kuroo still has no clue what he’s going to do or say.

Kuroo digs out the keys from the flowerpot by the front gate and lets himself into the house.  The living room and kitchen are shrouded in darkness, and there is a small light coming from the corridor upstairs.

The light in Kenma’s bedroom is on. Kuroo knocks once to alert the boy despite the fact that the door is ajar, and pushes the door open. He sees Kenma buried under the blankets, thin locks of blond hair the only thing visible from the doorway.  There is a faint sniff.  Kuroo pads across the room in his bare feet, certain that Kenma knows he’s there, but Kenma makes no move to greet him or even acknowledge his presence.

“I’m sorry I left.”  Kuroo says, sitting cautiously at the side of the lump. 

Kenma doesn’t react, just stifles a sob, breathing ragged.  The blanket trembles, and a small hand tugs the blankets even higher over his head.

“Kenma,  I’m sorry.  I was scared, and angry, and I didn’t mean what I said.”  Kuroo presses.  Hesitantly, he reaches out a hand and places it on Kenma’s back.  A shudder runs up the blankets. 

Still no reply.

“I was being stupid.”  Kuroo’s throat clenches.  “I was just… jealous that you picked Lev over me, okay?”

There’s a brief pause, and then Kenma sucks in a breath.  Another half-sob.

“Talk to me, Kenma.”  Kuroo whispers.  It’s so cold in between them, and Kuroo cannot stand it.  “Kenma, please.”

“Why would you even think—”  Kenma begins, and he sits up abruptly, wrenching the blankets off and getting tangled up in them for a few seconds. “Why would you—”

Finally, he succeeds in freeing himself, and whirls to face Kuroo.  The intensity of his gaze takes Kuroo off-guard.  The gold is glinting, vicious, sharp and a relief all at the once.

“Of course you’d be a better match than Lev.” Kenma says angrily, eyes blurred with tears.  “You’ve always been my best match.”

Kuroo feels like he’s been staked straight through the heart.

“Then I’m going with you.”  Kuroo says firmly, extending his arms and pulling Kenma close.  Kenma fights for a short moment, then lets Kuroo hold him close.

“I don’t want you to die.”  Kenma chokes out.

Kuroo brushes his lips against the crown of the boy’s head.  “Then don’t bring me there to die.  Take us there to win.”

Defeated, Kenma starts to cry, shoulders shaking. Kuroo feels himself shiver, despite the much welcome warmth in his arms.  It’s a victory, but it means so little when they’re about to fight a much bigger battle.

Kenma buries his face in Kuroo’s chest. There is a breath of something, _I’m sorry_ , and Kuroo hugs Kenma tighter.  It’s times like these that he feels he can never get enough of Kenma, like the two of them are two parts of a whole, and any amount of distance feels impossibly shattering.

Kuroo closes his eyes and inhales, wrapping his arms around the younger boy.  ‘I’ll keep you safe.’  He vows silently. ‘I’ll bring us home again.’

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been sitting in my computer for a really long time, and since I'm somehow a little free today and I really wanted to post something for Haikyuu!! week and Halloween, so I decided to finish chapter one and post it. I can't guarantee how quickly it'll be updated, but winter break is coming, so at least, I'll have then to do nothing but write, if I don't finish it earlier.
> 
> Talk to me! :D


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to be maybe a couple of paragraphs, quick sections explaining the setting and the game, and then I started writing it. Seven thousand words later, I'm super caught up in everything, and I would love to turn this into a movie. Of course, that's not going to happen, but man.
> 
> Do let me know what you think works and what doesn't, and if anything gets confusing.

Everything after that is a whirlwind. Kuroo and Kenma get their assignment sheets filled in, and two days later receive their IDs and assignment briefs in matching brown envelopes.  The briefs say nothing that wasn’t already mentioned in the previous folder they’d received, and come with a photocopy of the terms and conditions sheet with their signatures on it, just in case anyone could forget what they’d waived their rights to.  There is one extra piece of paper though, attached to the bottom of their assignment IDs like an afterthought:  a date and time, and a neatly signed promise to come pick them up outside their houses.

The date is two weeks away.

Kuroo goes to school for a couple of days, but everyone at school wants to talk to him about the game, wants to wish him well, to reminisce old times, to cry on his shoulder or place bets on him. It makes him sick, so he stops going.  He withdraws from his job at the factory without giving them notice, and doesn’t even feel bad about it.  He tries to spend a few days at home, but his mother cries every time she sees him and that’s even worse than school. 

So he wanders.  He goes back to school and plays more volleyball than he has in months. He serves until his hands are sore and aching, and goes back the next day, and the day after. He’s the only one in the gym and he runs, shoes squeaking against the floor, and he pretends he’s playing a match, he pretends he’s at Nationals, he pretends he’s going to spend his last year of high school practicing volleyball and worrying about college.

He goes downtown, sits for hours alone in restaurants and spends money on ridiculous, lavish things, like a dishwasher for his mom, and new shoes for his dad.  He goes into the game store to replace the console of Kenma’s that he’d taken, and buys piles of games that Kenma may never have the time to play. The shopkeeper, who recognizes Kuroo, inquires about Kenma, but Kuroo’s distracted and gives answers in halves, and proceeds to buy half the games in the store.  Despite the shopkeeper’s obvious joy at such rocketing sales, Kuroo can feel his concern practically tearing through him, and forces himself to keep calm.

It isn’t until he’s buying a suit for his father to match his new shoes does Kuroo think:  _this could be the suit he wears to my funeral_ , and breaks.  It’s dark outside now, and Kuroo doesn’t even remember when it got so dark.  His phone is out of battery and he should go home, but all he can think of is the funeral suit and the dishwasher which his mom probably won’t use because there will barely be anyone home to cook for anymore, and before Kuroo knows it, he’s sitting by the river where he used to come with Kenma, where once upon a time he’d told Kenma, ‘together we can do great things’, and believed it, _he believes it still,_ but in less than a week he’s had his whole life turned upside down and torn apart, and Kuroo needs time, he needs space, he needs—

A hand touches his shoulder gently and Kuroo reels back in shock, nearly knocking Kenma over.  He hadn’t even noticed the younger boy approach.

“Kenma.”  he murmurs, shaky.  Kenma is studying him, eyes sweeping surreptitiously down at the shopping bags he’d gathered throughout the day.

All at once, Kuroo is ashamed of himself. He’d pleaded and begged and argued his way into this, to be able to fight alongside Kenma.  Kenma had asked him not to, but he’d insisted, so sure that he’d be the right choice, but now he’s not so certain. Kuroo feels like crying. It’s not that he doesn't want to go, he needs to be with Kenma so badly that it hurts, but he never thought that going would hurt an equal amount because it also meant _leaving behind_.

Kenma takes his hand, tugging him to his feet. The blond boy says nothing for a long while, and then wraps Kuroo in a tight hug.  Warmth surges through Kuroo and he swallows hard, tangling a hand into the blond hair, tugging Kenma even closer as he tries to breathe around the heavy tension of everything that is about to happen.

“I’m sorry.”  Kuroo mumbles.  “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid.”  Kenma says into his shirt.  He doesn’t say anything else.

Kuroo breathes slowly.  The night is crisp and chill, and Kenma is warm. He concentrates on breathing, on the fact that he’s still alive, and eventually pieces himself back together.

 

-

 

Just like that, two weeks come and go. Kuroo’s sitting on his front steps, toeing at a line of dead grass.  Their driver is parked on the street right outside, a gruff middle-aged man who waits by the car for them to say goodbyes.

Kenma is standing several feet away, listening obediently to whatever his parents are saying, nodding occasionally. Kuroo’s mom doesn’t say anything, just hugs him.  She doesn’t cry, and it’s a relief.

“They’re still there, come on!”  Someone shouts, and a tumble of people burst into Kuroo’s front yard, one of them seizes Kenma and lifts him into the air while the smaller boy yelps in surprise.

Kuroo stands, staring.

It’s the old Nekoma volleyball team. Since the takeover, they’d seen and spoken little to each other.  It had been easier that way, to not spend every day sitting with a reminder of what you couldn’t have.

Lev puts Kenma down and the group swarms to Kuroo, shepherding Kenma along with them in the herd.  Hands clap Kuroo’s back, he gets half-hugs and handshakes and laughter in his ear.  Like everything else recently, it’s unexpected, but it sparks genuine gladness within Kuroo, and he wraps them all in a huge Nekoma hug. He realizes how ridiculous he’d been for keeping away from these people—they were brought together by volleyball, but they were held together by more than that.  He wishes he’d seen it sooner. 

After a couple of minutes, Yaku gets everyone to back off so that Kuroo and Kenma can spend more time with their families. The group floats off to the side, talking and watching, and somehow Kuroo finds himself standing alone with Lev.

“I told him to choose you.”  Lev says.  “But even I would have done everything I could to make sure he stayed alive.”

Kuroo reaches up to ruffle the grey hair, unable to speak.

It’s time.  Kuroo nods at his father, places a hand on his mother’s shoulder for what little good it does.

“Kenma.”  he says, and it sounds like it’s the only word his mouth knows. “Kenma.”

Everyone watches as they climb into the car. Several eyes are glassy, but Kuroo tries not to linger on them.

There is the distinct click of the car door locking. Briefly, his eyes roam back out the window, panic setting in, but the moment passes.  He sits back, Kenma beside him waving out the window, and lets the car take them away.

 

-

 

The drive to the facility goes on for what seems like eternity.  Kuroo falls asleep just as they leave Tokyo and wakes up to tall trees and deserted dust roads. He watches Kenma play with his new game console, looks out the window trying to find a signboard to no avail, eventually gives up and sleeps some more. 

They stop to eat once, pulled out at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, perched on the cliffs of a mountain. The driver makes a few phone calls out of earshot while Kuroo and Kenma sit on the roof of the car and eat a packed bento lunch, looking down at a valley of trees.  They sit there for twenty minutes, tops, and then are ushered back into the car.  They go up and down and left and right, and it makes Kuroo dizzy so he goes to sleep.  Kenma dozes, head pillowed against his shoulder, and after awhile just curls up in Kuroo’s lap. Kuroo rests his forehead against the cool glass window and debates asking the driver to put on some music.

It’s dark and drizzling lightly by the time they finally reach the building.  Kuroo is so disoriented that he’s almost certain it was done on purpose so that no one has any idea where they are.  For all he knows, the driver could have been driving circles around the outskirts of the city. 

The driver drops them off at the front entrance of the facility and points towards the front doors.  He grunts a ‘good luck’, and hightails it back to the car, out of the rain.  Kenma watches the car drive off, flicks the hood of his jacket over his head, and starts to drag his bag towards the shelter of the building.

The building is large and nondescript, with a huge, white exterior and tinted glass panels.  In the darkness, it’s hard to see much of the surroundings, but the spotlights bouncing off the roof of the facility are nearly blinding. Kuroo glances around at what he can see in the light:  a few sparse trees and shrubs, and then presumably miles and miles of dirt road. Kuroo wonders if it is the same on the other side of the building, or if there is more to see. He doesn’t fool himself into thinking there’s an escape.  He’s not here to escape.  He’s here to win.

When he joins Kenma under the slanted roof, Kenma digs into a brown envelope and pulls out his assignment ID, flashing it into the sensor panel by the door.  Kuroo pulls out his wallet and does the same.

The glass doors slide open, and Kuroo and Kenma step into the facility.  It’s unsurprisingly modern, but surprisingly modest.  The lobby is only a small seating area, two armchairs and a bowl of fruit atop a small table.  On either side of the lobby, a corridor spreads out like wings, disappearing around a curve without any suggestion of where they might lead.  Everything is white, except for a fine-art canvas hung on the wall directly above the armchairs, which is pink and purple and makes no sense whatsoever.

Footsteps echo down the corridor, soles tapping on the marble floor.  Kuroo turns just in time to see a small man with half-rimmed glasses appear around the curve of the corridor.

“Nekoma?”  he asks, and checks their ID cards.  “My name is Takeda Ittetsu, and I’m the overall supervisor of this branch.  You can leave your bags here.  Sugawara will make sure they’re brought to your rooms.”

He flashes his ID against one of the wall panels and it clicks, turning on its side to reveal a passageway.  In it is a large, semi-dark room with a lighted stairwell and a sleek, engineered waterfall.  “Go through here.  It’s about dinnertime, and you can meet the other players who’ve arrived. Three staircases up, or if you’d rather take the lift—”  he dances his fingers on a small touchpad, and what Kuroo had assumed was blank space turns out to be a glass box.

“We’ll take the stairs, thanks.”  Kuroo says, discomfited by the glass box. He’s completely out of place in this building, with its unnamed corridors and hidden passages and keypads with no keys, and it sets him on edge.  Taking Kenma’s arm, he enters the huge hidden room and makes his way cautiously towards the staircase.

“Hey.”  Takeda calls after them.  “Welcome.”

Kuroo resists the urge to run.

 

-

 

They take the stairwell three floors up and more sliding doors and hidden panels give way around them, eventually leading them into a huge dining hall with gymnasium-high roofs.  At least thirty or forty teenagers are milling around the tables, either eating or talking.  A group of girls pass them on their way to the buffet table, and Kenma takes a very noticeable step back.

“Come on.”  Kuroo says, with what he hopes is an encouraging smile. “I’m hungry.  Let’s eat.”

 

-

 

Dinner is about as disorienting as everything else, even though the food is thankfully normal. They sit at the end of a long table, with about ten other people whose names Kuroo forgets the moment it leaves their mouth.  He’s watching the atmosphere of the crowd, and while he senses no outright hostility, everyone is distant, wary.  He asks lots of questions to the people around him, but most of them have only arrived the same day, and are as confused as he is.

“Mitsumi and her Sacrifice have been here the longest.” One of the boys offer, pointing out a girl in a T-shirt and track bottoms who’s sitting alone at the table with a small, blond boy.  “They’ve been looking around everywhere, and they won’t tell us anything.”

“Why’s everyone so… unfriendly?”  Kuroo dares to ask.

The boy snorts.  “We’ve all read the same brief.  You tell me it doesn’t sound like a hell of a competition. Everyone’s just trying to win.”

“Have you been told anything about the game yet?” Kuroo asks.  He spears the bit of fish that Kenma is ignoring and puts it into his mouth, trading it for some tofu.

“Please, they haven’t told us anything. The only person who even speaks to us is Sugawara-san.  Well, Sawamura-san does too, but only to shout at us, I don’t think it counts.”

The boy is promptly distracted by a girl on his other side, and turns away before Kuroo can ask who they are.  Opposite Kuroo, a girl is messily peeling an orange and dipping it in curry.  Kuroo grimaces.  She grins at him and waves the curry-dipped orange before tossing it into her mouth.

“We hear rumours.”  She says.  “About the game.  They all say you kill or be killed.”

“You’re all forgetting that it’s supposed to be training.”  Someone else interrupts.  “Stop spreading horror stories.  If you learn to synchronize with your partner, everything will be fine.”

“Oh, Ikki.”  The girl sighs.  “Are you worried about synchronization?  Would you like to get better acquainted?”  she asks, loud and unpleasant.

“Bugger off, Kaiya.”  The boy says, and moves away.  Kuroo hopes for their sake that they aren’t partners.

Kenma leans against his arm.  “Can we go?”  he asks quietly.

Kuroo excuses himself from the table and they put their empty plates on a conveyor belt that takes the dishes away to the kitchens.  They watch for awhile to see if anyone else is leaving the room, and people do, disappearing through shifting walls.

“We’ll figure it out.”  Kuroo says, and grabs the arm of someone who passes to ask where they should go after dinner.  After finding out that they’re new, the girl tells him to check in with Sugawara at the dorms, and points him back to the stairwell.

“Up one floor.”  She says.  “Don’t worry about finding him, he’ll find you.”

 

-

 

Find them Sugawara does, and he looks so absolutely pleased to see them that Kuroo feels himself relaxing for the first time all evening.  “Hi!” he says brightly, while tapping away at a screen on the wall.  It pulls up their names and IDs and a whole lot of personal information. “I’m Sugawara Koushi, but you can call me Suga.  I look after the dorms. Kuroo-san, you’ll be in Room 2, and Kozume-san, you’ll be in Room 5.”

He takes off at a leisurely pace down the hallway, and greets everyone by name, pausing once or twice to tell kids to turn down their music or to stop leaving their belongings in the lounge. Presently he turns into a room with the number 2 hanging over the doorway, where about a dozen beds are arranged neatly in two rows, generously spaced out.  There is a small chest of drawers at the end of each bed, and a bedside table and a lamp.

A couple of other new kids waiting for Sugawara in the room, and he waves them together so he can speak to them all at once. “I’m the dorm master, okay? I’ll look after you guys, and I want you to come to me if you have questions about anything at all.”

“Are you supposed to be our replacement mother?” a boy snickers, and his partner shushes him, terrified. 

However, Sugawara just says serenely, “I know I can’t be a replacement for any of your mothers, but if it makes you feel better, you can feel free to think about me that way.”

A few of the boys who’ve been here longer laugh and coo.  Kuroo feels a touch of relief, knowing he has someone like Sugawara looking out for them.

“We’ve got some rules here,”  Sugawara continues.  “Firstly, I don’t care what happens in the game, this is a safe zone.  Nowhere in this building are you allowed to hurt another person, physically or mentally. If you are hurt or feel threatened in any way, I want you to come to me, and not to fight back. Do you hear me? If I find out any of you are intentionally trying to hurt someone else, I will deal with you personally and don’t think for a moment that I’ll go easy on you.”

There’s a chill in the room at the tone of Sugawara’s voice, serious and stern.  Everyone nods meekly, and Sugawara smiles at them.

“Secondly, I want all of you, to the best of your abilities, to be kind to one another.  This is not a rule, I cannot force you to make friends, but I want you to remember that you are all here because you have to be, that you are all new and just as afraid as the next person.  If you cannot do that, have respect.  It is going to be a difficult time for many of you, and I ask for you to remember respect and kindness.”

“Thirdly, lights out is at eleven.  And by lights out, I mean the whole building goes dark. If you want to be wandering outside in pitch darkness, be my guest.  I know Daichi likes to.”

A few boys mutter at the name, and Sugawara laughs. “Yeah.”  He says cheerfully.  “I know you’d all love to run into him in a dark corridor at night.”

“I ran into him when the lights were still on and it was already terrifying.”  Someone grumbles.  Suga pats him on the head sympathetically, and starts pointing the new boys to their assigned beds. He shows Kuroo to his bed, which is almost at the far end of the room, with a magnificent glass window that reflects his face back to him.  His luggage is already there waiting for him.

Kuroo follows Sugawara out the door as he leads Kenma and the other Sacrifices to their respective rooms, which are half-a-floor and a ghost door away, and points out Kenma’s bed to him.

“Uh, Suga-san?”  Kuroo says.  “What happens now?”

“The game will be introduced in two days, after the rest of the players arrive.  For now, you can poke around.  It’s an interesting building.”  Sugawara suggests. “Flash your IDs against anything that remotely looks like a door, or even anything that doesn’t. I had a kid here yesterday find a hidden room behind one of the shelves in the library.  If you can get in, you’re allowed in. Happy exploring.”

“Thank you.”  Kuroo says sincerely, and Suga smiles, as if he knows Kuroo is thanking him for more than just the advice.  He nods and flutters down the hallway, stopping to stick his head into a room and shout at someone.  Kuroo grins and turns to Kenma, ID in hand.

“Shall we?”

 

-

 

Nothing in the building appears to be labeled, and the first three floors are inaccessible.  Every staircase seems to lead to its own special location, and Kuroo loses track of which floor he’s on after the first hour. Kenma plods on dedicatedly, as if tracking through the maze of a game, and Kuroo smiles wryly, following behind the boy.

They find the lounge, which is on the same floor as the bed quarters.  It has a grand piano, a pool table, a pinball machine, snack vending machines, cozy armchairs, beanbags and couches sprawled around the curved room.  It’s also glass-walled, which Kuroo has come to realize holds true for most the rooms in the building that are meant for general use.

They find, after taking a wrong turn, a small roof garden and an equally small swimming pool, where a couple of people are hanging out in despite the ongoing drizzle.  They find the library, which is tucked away behind a moving wall.  The library is large and ornate, quite unlike the modernity of everything else, and its isolation from the rest of the facility promises it to be a welcome escape in the future.  Instead of poking around the library for hidden rooms, they go back to the corridors and they find another lounge, a smaller, more private one, and a cozy movie theatre.  Considering what they’re supposedly here for, the building is more like a five-star-hotel instead of a training facility.

Kenma starts noticing patterns in the colors of the tiny floor lights, and for half an hour they trail the lights according to color, while Kuroo taps his ID to every bit of suspicious-looking wall. Abruptly, Kenma stops right in the middle of the corridor, Kuroo walks straight into him.

“Here.”  Kenma says, pointing to the ground.  He marks a small ‘x’ on the floor with the toe of his shoe, looking around carefully.  Kuroo crouches down to tap his ID against the spot Kenma had indicated.  There is a click.

Kuroo looks around for a secret door, and Kenma’s eyes gleam.  He grabs Kuroo’s arm, eyes still following the lights, and they go back several feet to a utility closet that had been nothing but vacuum cleaners and mops.

“No way.”  Kuroo says, when Kenma wrenches the door open and this time it leads to a narrow corridor.

They dart down the corridor, which is so narrow Kuroo has to turn sideways sometimes, taking sharp turns and slopes and suddenly they burst out into fresh air, and a space so big it’s the size of a football field. Giant spotlights shine down onto black and grey asphalt, and then when Kuroo lifts his eyes to look farther, he sees blocks of colour in the ground everywhere, and white boxes like the markings of a tennis court, but in various different sizes.

“Hey, watch out, hey!”  a voice shouts, voice reverberating in the court.

Kuroo spins around and something collides with him straight in the face with a loud smack.  Kuroo crashes to the ground, elbows and palms thrown out instinctively to protect himself from the fall, and the he feels a stinging pain in his hands and arm as he hits.  Dimly, Kuroo wonders how stupid it would be if he got killed before the game even began.

“Oh my god.”  A voice says right into Kuroo’s ear.  A pair of hands grab his shoulders, and someone prods at him. “Are you okay? I didn’t kill him, did I?”

“Are you stupid?”  Someone else snaps.  “Nobody’s going to die from that.  And why weren’t you watching where you were going?”

“Uh, I was trying to trust you, like we were practicing?”  the first voice retorts.

Something orange is bobbing around the spots dancing in Kuroo’s head.  He cracks an eye open and finds it perched on top of someone’s head.

“Huh?”  he says, confused, and blinks.  It’s an orange tuft of hair.  Presently two faces swim into view, a kid with bright orange hair, and a scowling dark-haired boy.  The kid presses closer, and Kuroo shoves him away with a raw palm.

Kuroo sits up with a groan, touching his face gingerly and finds Kenma on his other side.  “What just happened?”  he asks, but the blond boy shrugs.

“He kicked you in the face.”  Kenma says noncommittally.

“It was an accident!  It’s because Bakageyama wasn’t paying attention!” the orange hair boy insists, and the other boy’s scowl only deepens.

“I was paying attention!  And they came out of nowhere and you were flailing around like a fish out of water—”

Kuroo holds up a hand, and they both stop arguing to watch a drop of blood trail down his palm and drip onto the floor. Kuroo finds himself distracted by it for a moment too, and then catches himself.

“Can we start again?  Who are you and where are we?”

 

-

 

The orange-haired boy is Hinata Shouyou and his Fighter is Kageyama Tobio.  Hinata loops an arm excitedly around Kenma’s and drags them to one end of the court, where bits of chalk are lying around and words are scribbled onto the floor with arrows and symbols.  Kuroo catches words like ‘jump’ and ‘flight’ and ‘speed’. 

“You’re amazing!”  Hinata is buzzing into Kenma’s ear.  “We’ve been here two days and no one else has found this place!  It’s the out-of-game practice arena, you can test your synchronization here and learn spells, it’s crazy and super fun!”

The enthusiasm is both infectious and dizzying. “What do you mean it’s the out-of-game practice arena?  Do you know about the game already?”

Hinata shrugs.  “It’s based on Fighter and Sacrifice, right?  Daichi-san was in here the first time we discovered it, like he was waiting for us, and he explained how to synchronize and taught us a couple of spells.”

“What spells?”  Kuroo asks, and Hinata leaps to his feet, almost in the air.

“Fly, fly, fly!”  he whoops, “Come on, Kageyama!  Synchronize me!”

Kageyama sighs and steps back a few feet, putting distance between them.  “Hinata Shouyou, Synchronize!”  he calls.

“Kageyma Tobio, Synchronize accept!” Hinata yells gleefully, jumps again, and _fucking takes flight_.

“Holy crap.”  Kuroo says, falling back, as Hinata sweeps around the arena, running and jumping and flying.  Kageyama’s eyes are focused on his Sacrifice, hands fisted at his side. Hinata does a front flip three times in a row and he’s so light, so weightless and quick, and it’s incredible.

“Watch this.”  Hinata says, picking up bits of chalk and flicking them into the distance, far out of reach.  “Kageyama, here!”

Within seconds, all three pieces of chalk burst into an explosion of powdered dust, colours bright and loud.  The smoke drifts off in small clouds, particles disappearing into the air.

Hinata has come back to Kageyama’s side, and both boys are breathing heavily but grinning.

“That was amazing.”  Kuroo says, completely blown away.

Hinata gives him a thumbs-up.  “You guys want to try?”

 

-

 

Three hours later, Kuroo is covered in powder from head to toe and Kenma is writing new words and patterns onto the floor when the lights go off without warning.

“Ah, crap!”  Hinata says, laughter still in his voice.  “Kageyama, what time is it?  We were supposed to start heading back at ten-thirty!”

Kageyama, who’d been sitting with Kenma on the floor and trying out spells, calls back, “I told you to set your alarm!”

“I did.”  Hinata says.  “I just left my phone back in the room.”

Kageyama grumbles in the darkness, and Kuroo can’t even make out his hand in front of his face.  He pulls out his phone, switching on the flashlight.

“Kenma, come on!”  Hinata says.  “I know a shortcut back to the Sacrifice wards.  What room are you in?  Five?  Me too!”

Another light goes on a couple of feet away, and Kuroo sees Kenma’s face illuminated by his phone screen.  He hurries over to the boy.

“Sorry big guy, but it’s a Sacrifices-only doorway.” Hinata says, appearing beside Kenma.  “You’re stuck with grumpy Kageyama.”

“Kenma.”  Kuroo says reluctantly.

“Don’t worry!”  Hinata says.  “We all got the same speech from Suga-san!  I’m not going to hurt him!”

Kuroo refuses to back down, eyes only on his partner, waiting.

Kenma looks up and meets Kuroo’s eyes. “I’ll be fine, Kuroo.”

Still hesitant, but resigned now, Kuroo steps back and lets Hinata take his place.  The two Sacrifices take off, the darkness swallowing them whole. Hinata yells back a ‘goodnight’ to his partner, there’s the rattle of a sliding door, and then everything goes quiet again.

Kageyama shifts awkwardly beside him. “Do you need help getting back?” he asks.

 

-

 

The next morning, Kuroo wakes up to sunlight in his face.  He sits and takes a moment to remember himself, propping against the pillows, an arm snaking out to grab the second pillow before it can fall off the bed.  The beds around him are still empty, and in the occupied beds some boys are still fast asleep, fondly dreaming of home.  Other beds are empty, their occupants long since risen to face the day, to get a head start.

Kuroo stretches his limbs and kicks off his blanket, feeling oddly satisfied.  Unless any one of them have found the practice arena, he’s sure that he’s the one with the advantage.

Kenma is still in bed when Kuroo goes to get him, and flops contentedly against Kuroo, urging him to go back to sleep.

“Don’t be silly.”  Kuroo says, peeling Kenma from him.  “I want to go back to the arena and I know you do too. Get up.”

 

-

 

They meet Hinata and Kageyama in the training courts again after breakfast, and find the two running laps, covered in sweat from head to toe.

Sunlight is coming through glass roofs that Kuroo hadn’t noticed last night since it was dark outside.  Kuroo walks along the lines of handwritten chalk again, reading aloud spells to himself.  They aren’t so much spells as they are prompts— ideas for what is possible and what has been done.

“What is this?”  he asks Hinata, as the boy ambles over, picking up more bits of chalk for Kageyama to practice exploding.  “Rolling thunder?"

Hinata shrugs.  “That’s been there since the first day, but it’s really old. Daichi-san said it might have been written by someone who tested the arena.  Hey, are you going to synchronize today?  It feels a little weird at first, but I think it would help get used to it now, instead of in the game.”

Kuroo had refused to try the synchronization last night, on the grounds that he was going to be all over the place testing spells and he didn’t want Kenma to take the damage meant for him.  Hinata had shrugged and synchronized with Kageyama without a thought, before running off to do more somersaults.

“Go somewhere quiet.”  Hinata says today, waving his hand in a gesture Kuroo doesn’t quite get.  “You need to be able to find each other.”

Kuroo’s eyes immediately go to Kenma, standing right beside him.

Hinata flaps his arms inelegantly, and sighs. “Not like that.” He says, and completely seriously, he places a hand over his heart and says, “You need to find each other here.”

With that very touching yet completely unhelpful sentence, Hinata sends them off to a corner so they can find each other. 

Kuroo sits down facing Kenma, their knees touching, and smiles.  “So.” He says.  “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Synchronize.”  Kenma says, as if that’s the answer Kuroo was looking for. Kuroo snorts at him.

“Kozume Kenma, Synchronize?”  he tries.

“I think you have to sound like you mean it.” Kenma says flatly.

“I think you have to actually accept.” Kuroo points out.

“I’ll accept when you sound like you mean it.”

Kuroo sighs and tries again.

“Kuroo Tetsurou, Synchronize accept.” Kenma says dutifully, as if reciting the title of a poem he has to read in front of the class.

“Are we synchronized?”  Kuroo asks.

“Probably not.”  Kenma says.

 

-

 

Every fifteen minutes or so, Hinata or Kageyama pass by to check on their progress.  They keep trying.

Kageyama watches them for a minute. “Maybe you should close your eyes.”  He says.

Kuroo eyes him suspiciously, but the other boy doesn’t laugh.  Still tense, Kuroo closes his eyes, trying to sense Kenma’s presence beside him.

“Kozume Kenma, Synchronize.”  Kuroo says loudly, as if volume will make up for the lack of actual ‘finding’ they’re doing.  He’s almost sure he senses Kenma wince at the loudness, but Kenma answers promptly anyway.

“Kuroo Tetsurou, Synchronize accept.”

“Did it work?”  Kuroo asks, opening his eyes again.

Kageyama crosses his arms.  “You don’t ask _me_. You’ll know if it happens.”

Kuroo frowns, because he’s been at it all morning, and he needs Hinata and Kageyama to tell him the answer.  He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, and the words ‘Kozume Kenma, Synchronize’ have started to taste like a piece of gum he’s been chewing on for hours.

“Know what?”  he asks in frustration, but Kageyama’s gone.

 

-

 

They try the synchronization various ways, with their eyes open and close.  They try shouting it to one another, like Hinata and Kageyama do, they try whispering it, a secret meant for two.  Kuroo whips it out of thin air, trying to take Kenma by surprise and none of it works. After two-and-a-half hours, Kuroo declares a much needed break.  They go over to watch Kageyama make cracks in the concrete with carefully applied pressure using only a finger.  They watch Hinata pop bubbles by just looking at them.

“Kozume Kenma, Synchronize.”  Kuroo says.

“Kuroo Tetsurou, Synchronize accept.” Kenma answers.

Nothing happens, and Kuroo wants to tear his hair out.

 

-

 

It comes to them after lunch, wrapped in the afternoon sun's rays like a gift, descending down to them as the clouds move across the sky, quiet and sudden.

Kuroo and Kenma are sitting in the bleachers under the sun and they both have their eyes closed.  Kuroo likes the sun, it feels like a picnic.  Hinata and Kageyama have stopped breaking things for the time being, and the whole arena is basked in sunshine and silence. 

Kuroo opens one eye and sees Kenma on his stomach, hair tickling his bottom chin.  Quietly, he murmurs, “Kozume Kenma, Synchronize.”

Half-asleep, Kenma replies, almost instinctively, “Kuroo Tetsurou, Synchronize accept.”

All at once, heat flares through Kuroo’s body. He thinks he hears a click, as if a key has turned in a lock, and he sits up, nearly knocking Kenma off him. Kenma is lying on his back now, a little dazed, his eyes wide, his body rigid.  He doesn’t look at Kuroo when Kuroo touches him, just lies there, curled a little into himself, a shudder going through his body when Kuro makes contact.

“ _Kenma_?” Kuroo says in panic, not sure what to do.  Did they mess up? Was it even possible to mess up? His heart is pounding erratically _thud-thud-thud_. His voice is low. “Kenma?”

Kenma pushes himself up slowly, body still trembling. He looks at Kuroo, and then inches closer.  He’s looking at Kuroo in a way that’s both intimidating and thrilling.  Kuroo watches the gold glints of the cat eyes, trying to rally his breathing.

“Jesus.”  Kuroo says, breaking the silence, his breath catching.  He chews at his bottom lip.  “Don’t look at me like that.” 

“You stop looking at me, then.”  Kenma retorts, flushed, but doesn’t tear his gaze away. Kuroo finds his breath scraping painfully up his throat, feeling like he’s seeing Kenma for the first time, and his heart feels raw and wholly defenseless, like it’s just sitting there in the open space between them, up for grabs.

Kuroo inhales sharply, lifting a shaky hand to cup it to Kenma’s cheek.  Warmth thrums beneath his fingertips and Kuroo feels something precious settling beneath his skin and he just stares, and stares, and stares.

After a long, long time, they pull apart, and the arena seems to glow differently.  His eyes view the world as if through prescription glasses, and Kuroo’s limbs feel shaky, like he’s been sitting for years.  Hinata passes by again, and Kenma reaches out to take Kuroo’s hand, sending a jolt of electricity through him that doesn’t hurt, only pulses with energy.

Hinata looks them up and down.

“Exactly like that.”  He says, nodding.

 

-

 

Working in synchronization with another person is a completely new dimension, and Kageyama and Hinata mostly leave them to it, saying that it takes time and it’s different with everyone. They throw spells back and forth, but mostly Kuroo finds himself closing his eyes to just sense Kenma’s presence. He wonders how it had taken so long for the to synchronize in the first place.  It feels so right that Kuroo can’t seem to remember what it felt like being unsynchronized.  Even when Kenma is several feet away, he can feel the younger boy’s heartbeat, nestled perfectly in his chest right beside his own heart.

When they finally leave the arena, the constructed magic-space ends and the synchronization automatically breaks off. Kuroo finds himself shocked by how painfully hollow it feels.  Hinata pats him on the back and takes Kenma’s arm.  The two disappear off through the secret door again.

“You’ll get used to it.”  Kageyama says, staring wistfully at the closed door, but Kuroo doesn’t want to.

 

-

 

Kuroo takes a long hot shower, standing beneath the cascading water, a hand still over the hole Kenma had left in his heart. His own heart is hammering in his chest, and it’s enough to keep him alive, but it aches so badly.  Kuroo wonders if Kenma feels the same.

He stands there so long that the water starts to run cold, and with a twist he shuts it off.

The sound of footsteps patter into the bathroom stalls, and two voices drift over to him.

“—three winners, right, so you know what I think these few days are for?  Making allies.” One boy is saying. “Think about it. The government isn’t wasteful, they’re not going to leave us in here to play pool and laze around. These days are here for a reason.”

“Nobody trusts anyone here.”  The other boy argues.

“Everyone is afraid, and they’re not thinking.” The first boy says. Kuroo towels his hair dry and listens carefully.  “Three groups win, which means six people can get out alive.  If we pick our teammates carefully, that would be six people working together in a team.  Three times the power, Hyousuke, we would have a great chance of winning.”

Hyousuke is silent for awhile.  Kuroo gets dressed quietly. 

“Who do you want to pick in the team?” Hyousuke finally asks.

“I don’t know yet.  But keep your eyes open.  We need people who are strong, people we can trust.”

Kuroo opens the bathroom door with a creak, and both boys fall silent.  They’re just around the corner, where the sinks are, out of sight. 

“Hello?  Who’s there?”  the first boy calls in alarm, as if he's in a horror movie, and by the time they come around the corner Kuroo has already disappeared out the door.

 

-

 

When Kuroo returns to the dorms after a shower, more boys have moved in, and the room is in disarray.  There are clothes strewn everywhere, among an assortment of wires and cables and comic books.  One boy, who’d brought what looked like a small mountain of manga, has given up organizing them and is now lying on his bed reading.

Two boys are trying to swap mattresses, for whatever reason, and Kuroo pauses to help, shrugging off their uncertain thanks. They all know this—that for most part, they might have to end up killing one another, but it doesn’t stop Kuroo from being civil now.  The conversation from the bathroom is still ringing in his head, but if there’s anyone in the facility he trusts to team up with, it's not these two.  Still, he’s been brought up better than this, and he’ll help where he can afford to. 

He continues to his bed and finds that the boy in the bed next to his has just moved in.  He’s about Kuroo’s age, and is sitting by the foot of his bed, pulling stuff out from his suitcase and unloading it all onto the floor around him. Kuroo nods at him in greeting, meeting a sharp, wary gaze.  There’s a fairly brief moment where Kuroo considers introducing himself, but the moment passes and he flops onto his bed, leaving the other boy to his own devices.

Kuroo toys with his phone for a little while, but there’s no reception and no internet, so there isn’t much to do.  He pulls up his photo gallery and goes through some photos, there are pictures of his parents, some friends as well as the volleyball team, and a quick screenshot of a fifty-percent off voucher for the new ramen store he’s been wanting to go to.  Kuroo looks at it a long while, and then deletes the image.

He turns his phone off, and in the blank screen, a bright, shimmering reflection catches his eye.  Kuroo turns lazily, and promptly sits up.  The boy on his left has finished unpacking, clothes all tucked away neatly into the drawer, except for something that looks like a bathrobe or a cape, which he has procured a clothes hanger for and has hung above his bed proudly like a flag. 

It’s gold and green and red and honestly, looks like a tacky, tinseled Christmas tree.  Kuroo is horrified.  Despite everything, Kuroo finds himself leaning over so he can take a closer look at the offending item. 

“What the hell is that?”  Kuroo asks.  There are little swirls in the fabric—which looks very soft and comfortable—but it’s downright atrocious.  Were those embroidered UFOs? 

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”  the boy says joyfully, with a lightness to his voice that takes Kuroo by surprise.  He stares closer at the robe.

“Amazing?  What is it?  Is that a nightgown? Who do you think you are, the king?”

“Oikawa Tooru.”  The boy says with a grin.  “And it’s the Grand King to you.”

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Blood and gore and suicide—and if this might bother you I suggest you might want to be very, very careful with the later chapters too. I’m not tagging the story for warnings, but seriously, this is on many levels (ha!) a Hunger Games fic. WARNINGS APPLY.
> 
> I've been writing this chapter for way too long, so I'm posting it now even though I don't think it's perfect. It's long and wordy, and quite a bit of world/character building, but it's all very important to the game universe. I'll continue to edit and work on this chapter, but it's time to move on to writing the rest of the story too.

Breakfast comes too early the next morning. Kuroo barely feels like he’s fallen asleep before a morning bell goes off, reminding them that they need to meet for the briefing at nine a.m.  Kuroo slithers into the dining hall just in time to grab a sandwich, and slumps over into the seat beside Kenma and sinks his face into the table.

He finds his new roommate sitting at a table on the far end of the dining hall, thumbing through the pages of a book while a dark-haired boy sits beside him, rearranging Oikawa’s breakfast in the plate for him.

Kuroo spends most of breakfast dozing against Kenma.  The smell of coffee wafts over him, and Kuroo wakes eventually, drinks Kenma’s quiet offering and feels marginally better.

The crowd in the dining hall wanes as it nears nine o’ clock. Kageyama and Hinata disappear down to explore the third floor, previously banned from them and thus exciting, uncharted territory. Kuroo finishes his breakfast and they escape the dining hall, leading the last-minute rush of people to the lecture hall they’re supposed to be meeting in.

The third floor is surprisingly ordinary. So used to blinking lights and corridors that move or appear out of thin air and sliding glass doors, Kuroo is confused by the normalcy of their new environment.  It easily passes for your average school corridor, except there are no windows.  Posters paper one of the billboards, Kuroo glances at it briefly, seeing training times and locations and tips that they’ll no doubt have to come back for later.

Kenma walks slowly beside him, eyes cautious and Kuroo treads carefully too— but nothing untoward happens, which is off-putting in itself.  They walk past classrooms, Fighters and Sacrifices milling in the halls, talking, looking around, and if Kuroo wants to he can pretend he’s at school again.

The lecture hall is large but standard, seats stacked in rows, towering over a small podium, desk and white projection screen.

Sawamura Daichi steps out of the shadows, startling Kuroo.  Suga had said that ‘Daichi liked roaming around in the dark’ and plenty of players had attested to how terrifying it was.  Seeing it for himself now, Kuroo practically skitters out of the way, pulling Kenma with him.

“Sit.”  Sawamura barks at the sea of faces staring at him, and locks the door. Striding towards the front of the room, he calls, “Come forward. Everything I say in the next few hours will be of utmost importance to you during the game.”

Kuroo and Kenma squeeze into the front row. Behind them a pair of twin girls are scribbling furiously into a notebook.

“My name is Sawamura Daichi.  For the next six days you will be working with me, learning about the game and how to navigate it.”

“You are here as a Fighter and Sacrifice duo. That is the single most important thing you must learn here.  Without your partner, you will not make it in the game.  I guarantee it.  By now, all of you should understand the basics of Synchronization and how it works.  For the duration of this training week, you will remain synched to your partner. Takeda-san has coded the building to accept your synchronization wherever you go, as long as you remain in the compound.  As such, there is no reason to break the synchronization.”

Sawamura turns his back on the room and begins writing on the whiteboard.  “By the time I finish writing, I want all of you to be Synchronized.” he says.

Quickly, Kuroo whispers, “Kenma Kozume, Sychronize.”

“Kuroo Tetsurou, Synchronize accept.” Kenma says without missing a beat, and the same rush of heat flares up through Kuroo’s throat, his heart fluttering wildly, erratically, until it finds Kenma’s heartbeat and nestles it close to his own.  Kuroo smiles at Kenma, and looks around the room.

Some pairs have synched easily, like Kuroo and Kenma, but others are looking at each other in panic.  They either stumble over the words, pitching guesses on how to achieve synchronization, or have lost themselves entirely, not knowing what to do.  Considering how long it had taken Kuroo and Kenma to synchronize the first time, Kuroo realizes that if he hadn’t met Hinata and Kageyama, that would easily have been them.

After several minutes, Sawamura steps back from the whiteboard and caps the marker, painfully slow.  There is a look of utter horror on one of the boy’s faces, and he ducks under the table with his Fighter just as Sawamura turns around.

The lecture hall is humming with raw energy, an eerie, cold sensation that warns of danger and strength.  Kuroo scoots even closer to Kenma, a sense of threat looming that keeps him on edge.

“For all of you who have not Synchronized, learn to do so by tomorrow.  As for everyone else, you will not fight anyone outside of the game, or the training arena.” Sawamura says to them sternly. “You are all safe here. Sugawara would have told you this. Do not worry about the people sitting around you.  Listen carefully, and learn the rules.”

He turns back to the whiteboard.

-

There is a series of numbers written on the whiteboard.

 

Levels 1-9:  500 -> 350  
Levels 10-19: 350 -> 300  
Levels 20–29: 300 -> 250  
Levels 30–39:  250 -> 200  
Levels 40-49: 200 -> 100  
Levels 50-59:  100 -> 70  
Levels 60-69: 70 -> 50  
Levels 70-79:  50 ->30  
Levels 80-89: 30 ->10  
Levels 90-99: 10 ->3  
 

  
“The game,”  Sawamura says, “Has ninety-nine levels.  For those of you who have played musical chairs, the premise of the game is very easy to grasp.  Every ten levels, there will be a locked door that cannot be opened except by a Fighter-Sacrifice pair with a key.  As you ascend each level, the number of keys lessen.” 

Sawamura points towards the whiteboard. “The game starts with one-thousand players, five-hundred pairs.  At the end of level nine, only three-hundred-and-fifty pairs will have acquired keys and be allowed onto the next level.  By the end of level ninety-nine, only three keys will be available, our three winning pairs.  Simple concept.”

“There will be monsters to fight, bosses to test your growth, experience points to be gained, weapons, spells, potions, special items and more.”  Sawamura scans the room, gaze hard.  “There are a lot of things to remember, but you will listen carefully, and you _will_ remember them.”

He presses a button and the picture of a long, spindly, vaguely hairy spider pops up on the screen.  Several people scream.  A girl falls out of her chair.

“This is your new best friend.”  Sawamura says.  “Behold, the key for each door:  a spider.  Congratulations, you’ll be spending the next year of your life looking for and catching spiders.” 

-

Sawamura talks for three hours.  He tells them about the different terrains on each level, about the spider-keys, save-points, game-injuries versus their carry through to the real world.  He talks about utilizing time and items to their advantage, about the monsters they may encounter and final bosses.  He tells them to climb each level carefully, to gather exp and treasures and be resourceful.  He warns them to stay away from a single creature, Death, who lurks from level to level, crawling back and forth, breathing black smoke.

“What do we get if we kill it?”  a girl asks.

Sawamura glowers at her, bracing his hands on the desk. “Why would you—I just said—”

“I mean, it’s a game, right?  Do we instantly win, or like super exp or some magical item?”  she asks.

“You get to live.”  Sawamura says bluntly, and goes on to the next topic.

-

When they’re finally dismissed for the day, everyone walks as if in a drug-induced stupor.  Kuroo’s mind is whirring, and Kenma is twirling the pen he’d been taking notes with during the briefing, notes folded and stuck in Kuroo’s jacket pocket.

Dinner is quiet, but Kuroo is brimming with energy. They meet Kageyama and Hinata in the arena again after dinner.  By now, Kuroo is sure they’re acting like teammates, the four of them, but he doesn't want to make any assumptions so he asks Kageyama later, when Kenma and Hinata are building a rainbow.

Kageyama looks surprised, as if he’d never thought of it, or as if he never thought he’d be asked.

“Do you want to?”  he asks cautiously, and Kuroo’s so relieved he actually laughs.

 -

When Kuroo goes to bed that night, Oikawa Tooru is still awake, reading something under the light of his bedside lamp. The book is thick and heavy, font only tiny specks from where Kuroo is sitting.  Kuroo remembers Oikawa reading something at breakfast too, and wonders if it’s the same book. 

“What are you reading?”  Kuroo asks, massaging a sore ankle from practice earlier as he pulls off his socks and climbs gratefully into bed.

Oikawa doesn’t say anything for awhile, and Kuroo shrugs.  Some people simply refused to talk to others here, saving their secrets for themselves, making no friends and no enemies.  But “The terms and conditions handbook.”  Oikawa answers, after a pause.

Kuroo sits back up in surprise.  “Nobody reads that.”  Kuroo says, aghast.

“Well.”  Oikawa says, still not looking up from his book.  “That is your first mistake.”

“You realize we’re starting training tomorrow, right?” Kuroo says.  “Are you sure you should be staying up all night to read the instruction manual?”

Oikawa finally meets his eyes.  “Are you sure you shouldn’t?”

Kuroo shakes his head and rolls onto his back, shielding his eyes from the light with an arm.  Fifteen minutes later, he’s still wide awake.  He sits up with a sigh, and Oikawa looks at him.

“Where did you get that book?”  Kuroo asks.

 -

The next morning, they’re divided into groups and sent to different arenas to practice spells.  There is no chalk in this one, but there are obstacles: the ground shakes beneath their feet, occasionally pitches someone into a crevice.  The arena is too hot then too cold, they don’t fight each other but they do fight beasts, monsters from Sawamura’s intensive list of creatures from yesterday, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. 

The creature they’re fighting right now is grotesque, like a kangaroo but the size of a baby elephant, head hanging off-kilter from its neck.  It makes a groaning noise, rumbling from deep in its belly, and beside Kuroo, Kenma murmurs, “Aim for the neck.”  Kuroo does, because Kenma sees things and remembers them, and is rewarded with a shower of gold glitter that vanishes before it hits the ground.

Another beast takes its place.  They stagger forward, howling, some moving forward slowly, others slithering on the ground, quick and efficient, so you don’t know that they’re there until it’s too late.  The first time something had caught Kuroo like this, the wire-thin but deep cuts had dragged Kenma to the floor, soaking his clothes a dark red. It took two seconds for Kuroo to take out that one after that, his own body preserved and unharmed.

Kenma had watched him, climbed to his feet shakily and nodded his head towards the next battle. 

Sawamura had warned them not to break the Synchronization, but for an hour after that, Kuroo had tried.  He had tried not Synchronizing with Kenma so they could both fight as individuals, but the number of spells and firepower halved when they were not Synchronized.  As a lone person, Kuroo could throw a couple of hits, cause a distraction, blow bubbles and pop balloons, but compared to the bridges he could build and the armies he fought while Synchronized, he soon reluctantly admitted that he needed to be Synchronized to Kenma in order to stand a chance in the game.

Kuroo realizes, while watching the arena, that a lot of Fighters only used their Sacrifices for one thing—to take damage. They hid them behind rocks or sit them on bleachers like a backup player, taking the fight one-handedly while their Sacrifices took the damage from a distance.

“That’s stupid.”  Hinata huffs, offended on their behalf, and takes a running jump straight into battle.

“Would you wait—”  Kageyama shouts, taking off after his Sacrifice, and then the entire battlefield is an explosion of orange and black smoke.

 -

As the training week progresses, Kuroo loses track of the day and the date, only knowing what they have on the agenda and where he has to be at what time.  Kuroo has learned to navigate both the facility and the arenas with agility, and everything else falls into place like clockwork.  In the mornings they wake up just minutes before the sun, shuffle to the bathrooms to take showers and make their way down to the cafeteria for breakfast.

In reverse, he tells the time at night by the comings and going of one Oikawa Tooru, who has taken to coming back way after lights out. Kuroo doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s doing, and something about Oikawa makes him reluctant to ask.

Oikawa’s weird— beyond the light, cheerful tone of his voice and the jarring loudness of his nightgown and occasional presence, he’s also gives off a sense of danger, one Kuroo has no proof of but can feel, and he knows others do too, when he’s watching Oikawa with his Sacrifice and the way everyone else gives them a wide berth without being told to.

“Are you okay?”  Kuroo asks, despite himself, when he wakes up one night to see Oikawa sitting in bed, shoulders hunched into himself, staring at nothing.

“Go back to sleep.”  Oikawa says, but there’s only an ache in his voice, no anger.

In the morning, the game manual is sitting at the foot of Oikawa’s bed, ripped to shreds by some manic emotional force. 

Kuroo doesn’t ask, and Oikawa, sitting at an island with his Sacrifice, offers no answers.

- 

On the last day of training, Kuroo dreams of game consoles and new data cards, he dreams of Kenma, drifting in and out of his vision, and he dreams of the blinking words “New Game?  Press Start” over and over again.  He wakes up still feeling tired, the past two weeks finally catching up to him, all the practices and trainings and just the new life in general.   He wanders through the routine as if still in a dream, and lets the crowd guide him to the lecture hall once again, for the last time. 

When he steps into the hall, all traces of sleep instantly vanish.  Playing on the projector screen is something Kuroo recognizes instantly:  footage of the takeover and the Fighter-Sacrifice jobs.

It plays on repeat and everyone watches in silent horror.  By the third loop Kuroo has stopped watching, but he can play it through by memory. The dead bodies of Sacrifices, piled in heaps, something dirty and black and ugly, as the Fighters move forward without a backwards glance, Synchronizing with someone new every time their Sacrifice falls.  After five days of being synchronized to Kenma, the mere thought of losing that connection sends Kuroo into shivers.  Kuroo feels his stomach churning, and tries to look elsewhere, but he can hearing screaming and crying and gunshots and not-looking is just as bad as looking.

At long last, a man steps into the room, Sawamura and Ennoshita flanking either side of him.  He is large, overweight and balding, but carries himself with a grace that is frightening.

“My name is Ito Sasaki.  I’m here to teach you the true point of Synchronization.”  He says, waving a hand at the screen.  “I’ve watched you fight in the arena.  I’ve seen the way you interact with your Sacrifices—some of you commendable, others are plain disappointing.  Under my request, you’ve all been Synchronized since Monday, haven’t you?”

Players nod meekly.

Ito taps his finger on the front row of desks, then points at a boy.  “Nishihara Ichirou. Step forward with your Sacrifice.”

Shakily, both boys stand.  Ito beckons them out from behind the desk, and they obey nervously.  Kuroo recognizes them as two boys Kenma has on occasion talked to, on account of them being intelligent, hard-working and yet humble.  The room is silent, as if waiting for an eulogy at a funeral that hasn’t happened yet. 

“Come, come.  You’re Synchronized, are you not?”  Ito says.  He looks down at the Sacrifice, who gives a tiny nod.

“Very good.”  Ito says, and then there is a gunshot.

For a fleeting moment, Kuroo has no idea what happened, but suddenly Nishihara Ichirou is kneeling on the floor, hunched over his Sacrifice’s body.  He’s screaming, clawing at his Sacrifice.  Kuroo shudders, his grip tightening on Kenma’s hand in a way that must be uncomfortable, but Kenma doesn’t complain.

“Yamato!!”  Nishihara screams, and when he shakes his Sacrifice’s body Kuroo sees for the first time the blood, blood everywhere, staining their clothes and pooling onto the floor.  “Yamato, wake up!”

“You’ve all been watching the video.” Ito says coldly, voice carrying over Nishihara’s sobs.  “Tell me. What should Nishihara-san do next?”

The entire front row flinches when he turns to look at them.  “Tell me.”

_Sacrifices piled in heaps as the Fighters move forward without a backwards glance, Synchronizing with someone new every time their Sacrifice falls—_

“Kozume Kenma.”  Ito says, and Kuroo’s so horrified he nearly misses it. 

“No.”  Kuroo snarls when Kenma shifts.

“Kozume Kenma.  Come forward.”  Ito says, and Kenma goes. 

“Kenma, don’t, Kenma—”  Before he can grab Kenma, a wave of agony suddenly lurches through him, a searing pain that sends his vision blanking and Kuroo falls back into his seat, gripping tightly at the desk.  His heart fells like it’s being ripped from him, and Kuroo sucks in a deep breath, blood rushing to his head.  When through a blurry vision Kuroo sees Kenma stumble, placing a hand at his chest, Kuroo instantly knows what happened— Kenma had broken their Synchronization.  Kuroo tastes blood in his teeth, and tries desperately to control his shaking limbs. His heart is empty, his chest hollow, something is missing, Kenma, _Kenma_.

Ito studies Kenma briefly, before turning back to Nishihara Ichirou.  “Your Sacrifice is gone, Nishihara Ichirou.  Synchronize with Kozume-san.”

Nishihara, bent over his Sacrifice, just lets out a choked wail.

“I said _Synchronize_ , Nishihara-san.”  Ito demands, and there is a click as he points the gun towards Nishihara Ichirou.

On his knees and still covered in the blood of his old Sacrifice, Nishihara looks up.  “Kozume Kenma,”  the boy says shakily, “Synchronize.”

Kenma steadily meets the other boy’s eyes. “Nishihara Ichirou, Synchronize accept.”

There is nothing but quiet.

“Huh.”  Ito says.  “Let’s see if that worked, shall we?”

Kuroo’s limbs snap into place and he flies to the front of the room.

“STOP IT!”  he shouts, throwing himself in front of Kenma.  In retrospect, perhaps he should have shielded Nishihara, since he’s Kenma’s Fighter now, but Kuroo isn’t thinking. All he can see is the dead boy on the floor and Kenma next in line.

“Ito-sensei, maybe you don’t have to—” Sawamura begins in a low voice, and the gun goes off.

The bullet goes right through Nishihara’s shoulder and he flinches.  With a startled noise of pain, Kenma’s legs give way, and Kuroo catches him around the waist as he falls, seeing the already prominent bloodstain on Kenma’s shoulder.

Kuroo stops thinking.  Shaking, he lowers Kenma to the floor.

“Kuroo, don’t!”  Kenma says, but Kuroo barely hears him.  Hands grasping at thin air, clenching into fists, he charges towards Ito.  Air is rushing through Kuroo’s ears and he runs, swinging his elbow back for momentum and—

The whole environment collapses around them, dizzying fragments as if he’s in a world made of glass and he never knew it until then.   Kuroo sits up abruptly in a chair, staring at a blank screen uncomfortably close to his face. There’s something over his head.

Kuroo fumbles with the helmet, unhooking it and yanking it off.  They’re in a room Kuroo has never seen before, and Ito is nowhere to be seen.  Across from him, Kenma lifts a hand to pull up his visor and Kuroo jerks out of the chair, flying over to his Sacrifice.

“I’m okay.”  Kenma says, even though his breathing his ragged, and Kuroo tugs aside the collar of his sweater to find clear, unmarked skin. He whirls around to see Ochida Yamato sitting up, looking disoriented but otherwise unharmed. Nishihara has buried his face in his Sacrifice’s chest, shaking uncontrollably.

There is a clap.  Ito steps into the room, Sawamura by his side.

“This is a practice arena for a reason.” Ito says. “If that happened in the game, Nishihara Ichirou, your Sacrifice would be dead, and I’d recommend you find another partner to synchronize with as soon as that happens.”

“Fighters,”  he says to the crowd, “The more Sacrifices you get to trust you, the better off you’ll be.  As a note—the rules state that three teams win.  We never said they had to be the same teams that signed up together in the first place.”

He nods, satisfied, and leaves destruction in his wake. 

-

Practices end after that, though everyone works harder than before.  With Ito Sasaki’s words echoing in their heads, the dynamics in the facility shift. Fighters and Sacrifices start working against each other, or training in secret with a different partner, testing the waters.

Kuroo keeps training in the old arena with Kageyama and Hinata.  It isn’t as fancy as the practice arenas and there aren’t any monsters to work with, but it’s large and empty, and Kenma has found a way to get the arena to switch terrain types. It’s a wonderful way to play at sneaking around environments, and Kenma thrills at the new mazes the arena conjures.

The final morning before the games begin, Kuroo goes for practice only to find Hinata and Kenma sitting outside the door of the arena, playing with a wiggling ball of light.

“What is that?”  Kuroo asks.

Kenma shrugs.  He pokes at the ball and it scatters into all directions, like tiny diamonds.

“Don’t go in there.”  Hinata says, gesturing towards the door.  “There are two guys in there shouting at each other, one calling the other an idiot nonstop.  I think they’re going to kill each other before the games even start.”

Kuroo raises an eyebrow.  On your average day, there were already always two guys in there shouting at one another, calling each other idiots. It was just usually Hinata and Kageyama.

Shaking his head, Kuroo pushes the door open. Hinata follows close behind him, not even taking his own advice.  Kuroo manages two steps in and before he stops abruptly.

The whole arena is in wreckage, and there is blood everywhere.  The floor is cracked, sharp, jagged lines prominent under the sunlight.  Bloody handprints dart across the floors, the bleachers.  The sight is startling because they had always been so careful with each other, reluctant to get hurt and have it carry through to their Sacrifices.

His eyes raise to the very center of the destruction, where two figures are kneeling on the floor, covered in blood and dust.

“Aren’t they supposed to be on the same team?” Hinata asks in a loud whisper.

Shoving Kenma behind him, Kuroo takes a few steps closer.

It is Oikawa and Iwaizumi.  Kuroo comes to the startling realization that he’s never actually seen the two during training, and seeing them here, now, is just as out of place as all the ruins around them.

“Don’t be an idiot—come on, Oikawa, stop it already.” Iwaizumi is murmuring, hands grasping at his Fighter’s forearms.  Oikawa is crouched down, blood trailing down his shirt.

“I can do it.”  Oikawa hisses, teeth clenched.  “I can do it, please, just trust me—”

“It’s not worth it, Oikawa.”  Iwaizumi says, voice rough, “Come on, don’t be a dumbass.”

“Shut up!  I refuse to use you as a fucking shield, okay?”  Oikawa shouts and yanks himself to his feet, backwards and away from his Sacrifice.

“Tooru, please.”  Iwaizumi murmurs softly.

“Don’t.”  Oikawa says, voice as thin as ice.  “Don’t use that on me.”

“You don’t have a choice.”  Iwaizumi says.  “The games start tomorrow.”

“I’ll get another Sacrifice.”  Oikawa retorts.  “Watch me.”

Iwaizumi just shakes his head sadly. “And what happens to me?”

“Go home.”  Oikawa says, closing his eyes.  “Go home, Hajime.”

Iwaizumi stands regretfully, brushing dirt off his shirt.  For some reason, despite their Synchronization roles, Iwaizumi barely seems to have taken any damage from whatever they had been up to that morning, whereupon Oikawa looks like he just fought the horsemen of the apocalypse. 

“That’s not how it works, Oikawa.”

Iwaizumi closes the distance between them and wraps his arms around his Fighter.  Oikawa takes a shuddering breath, and all the fight leaves his body, sinking into his Sacrifice’s embrace.  “I can’t—  I don’t want to—”

“It’s okay.”  Iwaizumi shushes him gently, and then his expression darkens when he catches sight of their audience.  Oikawa must sense it, because he pulls away from Iwaizumi and tenses at the sight of Kuroo.

“What do you want?”  Oikawa hisses, eyes narrowed, teeth flecked with blood.  Just like that, all the earlier traces of vulnerability is gone.

For some reason, it is in that exact moment when Kuroo decides he wants Oikawa Tooru as a teammate.

-

 “No.”  Kageyama says, when Kuroo proposes it to them over lunch.  In the final few days, the idea of forming teams has become priority for many people, and when Kuroo looks across the dining hall, most have broken down into small teams of two and three pairs.

Kenma, on his right, is watching the groups intently, labeling and compartmentalizing them for future use.  He’s been doing it all week, during training, mealtimes and even in the dorms.  When asked, Kenma can tell them which pairs he thinks have the strongest synchronizations, who they need to watch out for, and who they need to avoid, and who cannot be trusted. 

Kuroo had asked Kenma, earlier, what he thought about adding Oikawa and Iwaizumi to the team and Kenma had nodded.  It’s more than enough for Kuroo to take the offer to Kageyama and Hinata.

“Oikawa is crazy.”  Kageyama says, in the present.  “He’s likely to get us killed.”

 “You train with him in the arena.”  Kuroo says.  “You know he’s good.  You asked him to teach you that spell, with the—”

“Ba-ching-tmp?”  Hinata offers, and they both stop to stare at him.

Hinata waves his hands, trying to explain. “The one he did yesterday, right? It went all ba-ching-thun-thmp?”

Without a word to his Sacrifice, Kageyama turns back to Kuroo.  “He’s definitely good, but he’s dangerous.”  Kageyama says.

“Dangerous is good.”  Kuroo presses.  His eyes trail off to where Oikawa and Iwaizumi are sitting.  They’ve stopped shouting at each other for the time being, and are sitting quietly, eating.  The entire table is empty apart from the two of them, even though there’s enough space for at least another two groups to sit and talk without being overheard.

“You say that because you haven’t seen him synchronize with Kenma.”  Kageyama says.

Kuroo starts, turning to his Sacrifice. “He’s synchronized with you? When?  Why?”

Kenma shrugs.  “It was during practice.  He said he wanted to test something.”

“Did he hurt you?”  Kuroo asks, tensing. 

Kenma shakes his head.

“He’s reaaaaally good at synchronizing with everyone though.”  Hinata chirps in. “He got Mitsumi’s Sacrifice, Amane-kun, to synchronize with him in the middle of a fight.  Kenma’s really good too.  Everyone wants him as their Sacrifice.” 

“What makes a good Sacrifice?”  Kuroo asks, despite the horror of everyone wanting Kenma to take damage for them.  He can’t fathom how that’s supposed to be a compliment, even though Hinata clearly means it as one.

“Energy?”  Hinata muses.  “Perseverance.  Complete trust in their Fighter.”

“Being alive.”  Kenma says, and Kuroo winces.

The crowd is slowly dwindling away. Everyone has gone back to the rooms to rest, or vanished off to the practice rooms.

“Are we practicing today?”  Hinata asks.

“Maybe later.”  Kuroo muses.  He glances at Kageyama.  “I was hoping to ask Oikawa and Iwaizumi first, so they can join us for practice.”

“Whatever.”  The boy says sullenly.  “You can ask him.  I’ve seen the way he talks to his partner.  They’re not going to say yes.”

Kuroo pumps his fist into the air.

 -

“No.”  Oikawa says. “I’m flattered, but no. Now go away.”

If he thought it was hard convincing Kageyama to agree, Kuroo doesn’t know why he imagined getting Oikawa to agree would be any easier.  Kenma provides no help at all, but then, Kuroo hadn’t expected any, so at least that's going according to plan.

“Why not?”  Kuroo argues.  They’re in the lounge, and Oikawa is pointedly pretending that Kuroo hadn’t seen the blood and fight in him that morning.  Kuroo knows how badly Oikawa wants to win and why, and he wants Oikawa to win with them.  “You know we’d make a strong team, and as much as you hate Kageyama, you two would fight incredibly well side by side.”

Oikawa raises his head from slowly from the piano where he’s been plucking out a very bad couple of songs.  “I’ve got nothing against Tobio-chan. He’s free to do whatever he likes.”

Kuroo sighs.  “You’re not stupid, Oikawa.  You know we’d make a good team.”

“Thanks.”  Oikawa says carelessly, and turns back to his piano. Iwaizumi shifts on the bench so he can tuck their knees together.

“Damnit.”  Kuroo says, turning to Iwaizumi.  “Convince him.  You know I’m right.”

Iwaizumi just lifts a shoulder, apologetic. “Oikawa has his reasons. We’ll try our own way, thank you, Kuroo-san.”

“Oh, Iwa-chan, you’re so good to me sometimes.” Oikawa says cheerfully, and presses down on a mismatched chord that makes Iwaizumi wince.

“That’s doesn’t explain anything!”  Kuroo says in frustration.

Oikawa looks up again.  His gaze moves to Kenma, and for a moment something flickers in his eyes, fear, anger, and then it glazes over with a wicked glint.

“You know.”  Oikawa says to Kenma, but his voice is nowhere as harsh as it could sound.  Kenma pulls back, but just a little.  “You know why.”

“I don't—”

Oikawa raises an eyebrow, eyes drilling holes through Kuroo’s Sacrifice.  He leans closer, as if he finds Kenma fascinating.  “You do know, Kenma-chan.  But you don’t know it yet.” 

Oikawa lets out a bark of laughter, but it’s choked, all broken glass and a minor key etude.  “Play well tomorrow, Kuroo-kun.  If you see me,”  Oikawa says, “You should try your best to kill me.”

 -

Kuroo is woken up in the middle of the night to screaming.  He sits bolt upright, exchanging a startled look with Oikawa, who has leapt out of bed and is pulling on his fancy robe.  Around them, the other Fighters are scrambling out of bed, tripping over one another.

“What’s going on?”  someone demands, and someone else yawns loudly. 

“Is this a hazing thing?”  a boy grumbles, and burrows back under the blankets. A few others nod their assent, but the screaming still continues outside, a high-pitched, terrified wail of complete devastation.  Kuroo’s feels a shiver run through him.  There’s no way this is a joke.

A loud bang shoots through the room, and the door of the ward bursts open.  Kuroo jumps a foot.  Artificial light illuminates a yellow rectangle in the dark room, and a couple of tiny figures barrel in, Sacrifices looking for their Fighters, one boy is crying.

Everyone gathers around one of the Sacrifices, questioning him. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Oikawa making towards the door.  Kuroo follows anxiously.

The lights in the corridor are on, but sparingly, as though someone just reached for a couple of light switches and forgot about the rest.  The door to Kenma’s ward is open, and Sacrifices are gathered at the doorway, talking in hushed whispers and in various states of undress.

Footsteps come pounding down the corridor, and Sugawara darts towards the room.  “Sacrifices, move, please!”  he says, herding them away from the ward.  Sawamura shows up right behind him, and starts forcefully pulling at the Sacrifices.  Kuroo doesn’t see Kenma.

“What’s happening?”  a voice asks, and Kuroo turns to see Kageyama standing beside them. Kuroo scans the crowd of Sacrifices, and doesn’t see Hinata either.  Or Iwaizumi.

As if choreographed, all three of them immediately start towards the room.  Despite all the commotion, the room is still shrouded in darkness— and Kuroo’s almost at the doorway and still can’t see what’s going on.

Oikawa seems to have a hold on the situation though, and freezes, then disappears into the ward.  Kuroo follows, trying to make out the shapes in the darkness, sees Oikawa heading forcefully towards a tall figure that must be Iwaizumi, who has someone that looks like Hinata perched on his shoulders, and they are both standing on a chair that Kenma is holding still.  Kuroo tilts his head, confused, the silhouettes blending into one another and making it hard to distinguish each figure from the other.

“Stop, all of you.”  A voice says from the doorway.  “Daichi’s getting a ladder.  We don’t need anyone else hurt tonight.”

“But Aoi-kun—”  Hinata protests, but Iwaizumi steps off the chair and slides Hinata off his shoulders.  A dark silhouette remains hovering in the air even after the human ladder dismantles.

All the blood abruptly leaves Kuroo’s face as he realizes what he is looking at.

There is a body hanging from the ceiling.

- 

They move the Sacrifices from Aoi Kazuki’s ward to the lounge for the night, but no one sleeps.  Half of the Sacrifices are in the Fighter’s wards, curled up with their Fighters for comfort after the scare.  The other half huddle together closely, whispering.

Aoi Kazuki’s Fighter had left him for a different Sacrifice.

Kenma settles down at Kuroo's side, one hand curled against his chest.  Kuroo listens to the whispered conversations for a few minutes longer, then pulls the blankets over their heads to block out the noise.  They’re starting the games only tomorrow, but Kuroo already has a sour taste in his mouth.

He dozes fitfully, dreaming of moons with laughing faces in the dark night.  He dreams of a long road that leads nowhere.  He dreams of a single chair sitting unoccupied in an empty room. He dreams that he wakes up at home, in his own bed, safe and sound, and somehow that is the worst dream of them all.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t play any games so I don’t know why I thought writing this was a good idea. Since this chapter is depressing and I meant to end it on a lighter note (but didn't manage to), here is a sneak preview of the next chapter, where the games finally, finally begin:
> 
>   __
> 
> _“Oh my God.” Kuroo says, after watching them for a moment. “I must be stuck with the only two boys in Japan who don’t know how to kill a spider.”_
> 
> _“Animals don’t like me.” Kageyama says defensively._
> 
> _“How is that even supposed to be relevant?” Kuroo asks. “You’re supposed to kill it, not ask for its hand in marriage.”_
> 
>    
>  __
> 
> Oh, Kageyama. Thank you for reading! :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentioned on tumblr that I wrote the two final chapters of Limit and then just couldn't finish it the way I had planned because I let myself get attached. So I tried to rewrite it. No, I didn't rob you of a chapter when I wrote a happy ending. This chapter is 11k words of death and blood and tears, but thanks to the rewrite you now get... well... just a bit less death and blood and tears.
> 
> I don't know how to write exciting fight scenes. Go figure, my Hunger Games AU involves people lying around in bed talking to one another.

In a secret facility on the top of a hill somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Kuroo is asleep in a chair, a visor over his head and electronic wires taped to the insides of his arms.  Wherever that is, the room is quiet, a hundred sleeping bodies, only their minds wide awake.

What Kuroo is seeing is a game, he knows this: the earth is chaos, hundreds of people running in every direction, bits of brick and stone hurtling into the sky, smoke clouding the small town too quickly for Kuroo to make out the now faded silhouettes.

“Come on!”  Someone shouts into his ear, and it’s Kenma, who shoves a bunch of sticks and a bundle of cloth into his arms and then keeps running, dragging Kuroo along with him.  Kuroo doesn’t question it, just holds onto the items and squints in the smoke.

Kenma darts in and out effortlessly, hand tightly gripped against the fabric of Kuroo’s shirt.  Kuroo vaguely realizes that he doesn't even know what he’s wearing, but thinks ‘damn this shirt is soft’.  There’s a ticking noise somewhere in Kuroo’s head and Kenma shouts, “Shouyou!” into the abyss.

Something collides with them head on.

“Don’t drop the bundle!”  Kenma says urgently, and then they’re airborne.

 

-

 

Kuroo doesn’t drop the bundle, not while they’re in the air, at least.  Kuroo’s not sure how, but instead of the marshlands or a bed of rocks, they fall into a row of springy bushes.  Kuroo is promptly bounced off the leaves and into a clearing, shoulder taking the fall but a lot more alive than he’d expected.  

It’s then he lets go of the bundle, whcich rolls a little and stops where the land meets the marsh.  Kenma stands, covered in leaves and thorns and makes his way to the bundle.  Kuroo picks himself up at a more leisurely pace and crouches down beside the boy, picking branches off Kenma’s hair and clothes.

Moments later, Hinata pops out of the bushes, waving his arms and shouting “Did you see that?  Did you see that?” 

He stops with a halt right above Kenma, looking down at the bundle and promptly forgets what he’s so excited about. “What is that?”

“Is that a baby?”  Kuroo asks, watching as Kenma carefully unfolds the tiny blankets. “Please don’t tell me we have a baby.”

“It’s not a baby.”  Kenma says obediently, and whatever the thing in the blanket is, it lets out a tiny whine.

“Good God.”  Kuroo says.  “It is a baby.”

 Kenma sinks back on his heels and turns around, lifting the baby from the swathes so Kuroo can look at it.  “It’s not a baby.”  He repeats.  “Well, it’s not a human baby.”

Kuroo’s jaw drops.  “What the hell is that?  It’s disgusting.”

Kageyama makes a sound of distress. “Should we kill it?”

“It’s a swampling.”  Kenma says, and puts it onto the ground.  It looks like a tiny pig, but covered with mud and twigs, until what Kuroo had thought was its stomach opens into a huge gaping hole and starts munching on brown leaves.

Kuroo’s mouth moves around the word, no sound coming out.  Even his throat doesn’t seem to think that it’s an actual word.  The creature rolls over, looking for more leaves. 

“Swampling?”  Hinata repeats, plucking a few leaves from the ground and tossing it towards the thing.  “What is that?  Is it a good guy?”

“Here.”  Kenma says, and pulls a floating information box out of thin air. “Hinata, it’s under the info tab.”

MAROON SWAMPLING, the shimmery text reads, and Kuroo’s so distracted by the fact that he’s kneeling in the middle of the forest reading off a hologram that he doesn’t read the rest.

“Where did you get that?”  Kuroo demands.

“There are buttons.”  Kenma says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “‘Start’ for the menu and ‘A’ for the map.  I’ve configured the shortcut keys for us already.”

 “When did you have the time to configure shortcut keys? And what buttons? There aren’t any buttons!”

Kuroo strains his eyes to see, as though if he rolls his eyes into the back of their sockets he’ll find these hidden buttons. Kenma shakes his arm.

“You think of the buttons.”  Kenma says.

“Think of the buttons?  What the hell is this game now, reading my mind?”

Kenma’s about to say something else when Hinata lets out a shout.  “I did it!” He’s staring into space, focused on the empty space in the air, and grabs Kageyama’s hand for attention. “Look, it says Maroon Swampling!”

“What is he looking at?”  Kuroo says, as both boys proceed to stare at the blank spot intently.

Kenma shrugs a shoulder, waving at the floating information box.  “The same thing you’re looking at.  You can’t see it because you’re not Synchronized with them.  Kuroo, you can’t expect to see everyone else’s menu screens, nobody would get anywhere.”

 

-

 

Kuroo carries the Swampling around in its bundle of cloth because apparently Maroon Swamplings are rare as hell and can be sold or traded at a very high price.  Rather than participate in the illegal animal trade market however, they find out on one particularly rainy day that Swamplings also make magnificent rafts when you add water to them.  By noon Kuroo is dragging something akin to an inflatable pool behind him, and by midday the rain has stopped but they are trekking through knee-deep water, the Swampling floating around behind them.

“Get in.”  Kenma sighs.  “No one’s going to buy him at this rate.  He’s all bloated.”

“Get in?”  Kuroo repeats.

Hinata doesn’t need an explanation. After all, Hinata had read the information menu.  He climbs onto the now pancake-shaped mucky looking Swampling and beams as though it earned him a boy scout patch.  Kageyama eyes the Swampling uncomfortably.

“Come on.”  Kenma says.

Kuroo reluctantly climbs in.

 

-

 

The Maroon Swampling, despite its soggy and squishy surface, provides them safe passage all the way to the next level. It’s hard to tell where each level begins and ends, but at some point they row through a curtain of Spanish moss and the number in the periphery of Kuroo’s vision dings quietly and switches to two.

Kenma says they’re going West, so Kuroo navigates the Swampling while the boy dissects the menu bar and scans through all the available data.  After a couple of hours they find a river that runs upstream, which according to Sawamura’s lessons is always the best path to take, so they agree to take it, even if slightly off-course.

Hinata and Kageyama start fishing in the river, pulling out odd fishes and gutting them, gaining both weird items and exp, as well as adding to their creature directory.  When they trade roles, Kuroo gently scrapes the net along the bottom of the riverbed, collecting coins and seaweed in unnatural shades of neon. It makes all of them uncomfortable and is of no use, so Kuroo returns the party-seaweed to the river.

They set camp on a tiny island of mud among some tall grass.  There are apples bobbing in the river, growing among the duckweed, and after some experimentation, they deem the apples safe to eat.

The next morning, Kuroo wakes up to find a bright green frog the size of a small car chewing on the end of their Swampling and repeatedly croaking the first few notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. 

“What the—”  Kuroo begins, and Kenma, supposedly on watch duty, waves Kuroo over with a flapping motion of his hand.

“Wake Hinata and Kageyama up.”  Kenma whispers.  “It’s calling friends over.” 

“And you’re letting it?”  Kuroo asks dubiously.  The frog lets out another few croaks, by now the Swampling is at least half-eaten, but doesn’t quite seem to mind.

“It’s good exp.”  Kenma says, eyes gleaming.  “Hurry up.”

Kuroo eyes the car-sized frog up and down. Instead of questioning Kenma, he returns to the tent and wakes Hinata and Kageyama up, relaying the news.

“Why is it calling its friends?”  Hinata asks.  “The Swampling’s almost all gone.”

That’s a great question.  Before Kuroo can think of an answer, the dirty brown water starts boiling, bubbles forming on the surface and popping just as quickly. 

“Kenma, come back here!”  Kuroo yelps, reeling back.  The water parts as suddenly at least a dozen more frogs emerge at the same time, joining in the song to form a choir. Kenma watches, amazed, then quickly scrambles back to join them.

“We need to kill all of them.”  Kenma says, clearly already envisioning all the level-ups in store for them. 

“Yeah well, tell me how.”  Kuroo says.  He’s already colour-coding them, trying to remember what Sawamura had said about the weaknesses of each different coloured species.

Kenma giggles, actually giggles, and it takes Kuroo by surprise.

“You tickle them.”  Kuroo remembers.  He wipes down a damp hand against his shirt.  “We’re going to go up to those things and tickle them?”

 

-

 

You tickle the frogs, and they don’t just die— that would be to kind.  They explode.

Kuroo spends the next twenty minutes crawling under the bellies of oversized frogs, grimacing and wiggling his fingers against the slimy surface, hearing their croaks become increasingly high-pitched and finally ducking away in hopes of avoiding exploded frog bits. 

Hinata seems to find the whole process hilarious and kills more frogs than the rest of them put together, laughing and giggling as though he’s the one being tickled.  Eventually, Kageyama gets tired of tickling things and picks up a huge fallen tree trunk, popping the remainder of them like a bubble.

In the following victory march that chimes loudly above their heads, Kuroo watches his levels climb upwards, feeling undeserving. Hinata just keeps laughing, and Kageyama swings the tree trunk around, resting it perpendicular to the ground like a classical video game hero.  Barely a moment later, something clinks off the side of Hinata’s head and skids behind a bush. 

“What was that?”  Kageyama says in alarm.

They hurry around the bush, Kageyama holding the entire tree trunk in front of him like a sword.  There’s a trail of black slush; at the end of it a spider is lying sprawled out, dead.

They stare at it for a long while, disbelieving.

“Did that spider just fall off a tree, bash itself against your head and die?”  Kageyama asks.

“Eungh!”  Hinata says, tearing at his hair, standing that distance between fascination and repulsion.  He sticks out a foot to toe the spider over, and it flops like a fish, contorting into odd shapes and angles.

“Oh, look!”  Kenma says, grabbing Hinata’s arm, and all of a sudden in the place of the spider is a large skeleton key on the end of a string. Kenma nudges Hinata. “Pick it up.”

Hinata crouches down to pick up the key by the string, mouth twisted into a grimace.  “This is made of spider mush.”  He complains.

“I don’t know what you’re so horrified about, you’re covered in giant frog blood.”  Kenma points out, and Hinata shrieks, head-butting him.

“Good job.”  Kuroo says, gingerly patting Hinata on the head and coming back with a handful of slime.

 

-

 

The terrain is hot and humid and everything squishes beneath his feet.  In this world the usually harmless chirping of crickets and marsh wildlife sets Kuroo on edge.

Over the next week, Kenma monitors the number of remaining spiders using some other secret button in his mind that Kuroo can’t find, and sees that after the first week the number of spiders remains at a standstill.  So instead of mindlessly stomping through the forest, they choose instead to practice their skills, level up and collect items.  They build a temporary home inside a damp cave and learn a couple of new spells.

Hinata can blow something up from the inside now, which is fairly effective but also a far messier process than can be praised for. Kenma brews experimental potions from flowers and herbs and bits of stone and fluff that Hinata brings back for him, creates a sweet, refreshing juice, a corrosive, spark-shooting dandelion, and a red-and-purple spotted banana that Kuroo disposes off before Kenma can convince Hinata to taste.

Kuroo scratches the passing days into a piece of bark with his fingernails, while Kenma scribbles notes into an actual journal with a fancy fountain pen.  They get their second key almost two weeks into the game, when Hinata and Kageyama come across one in an empty clearing, long legs dancing around the field. 

This is how Kuroo finds them a few minutes after the discovery, still scrambling after the long-legged, prancing spider. It strolls heedlessly, having a sunny siesta in the meadow while two terrified boys rock-paper-scissors over who should smush it.

“Oh my God.”  Kuroo says, after watching them for a moment.  “I must be stuck with the only two boys in Japan who don’t know how to kill a spider.”

“Animals don’t like me.”  Kageyama says defensively.

“How is that even supposed to be relevant?” Kuroo asks.  “You’re supposed to kill it, not ask for its hand in marriage.”

Hinata rolls over laughing, and Kageyama promptly trips over him.  The spider jumps a foot into the air, and bolts towards the forest. 

Kuroo hits the spider with a crack of lightning and it skids to a halt right at Kenma’s feet.  Kenma picks it up, making a face as the gooey remains of the spider transform into a sleek black key in his hand.

Kenma weighs it in his hand and Hinata smiles beatifically at him, dashing over to pull out his own key.

Two keys.  They just need to do this nine more times.

 

-

Every ten levels has a theme.  Shortly after the forest-swamps they have an imperial palace grounds, shrines and towers that go on forever, in the twenties it is an kitschy Alice-in-Wonderland town, the thirties in some dark, coal mine with more ladders upwards that tracks forward, and in the forties it is an underwater maze.

Kuroo can’t swim in real life but that doesn’t seem to matter here.  They bob up and down, movement slowed down in the water.  The game-designed sea is an abhorrent surrealist painting, blue-greens and deep purples, weaved together in a tapestry meant only for dungeons and witches.  Warm yellow lamp-fishes swim on by, pulsing with light, and Hinata takes to carrying one around in his backpack for emergencies. 

Like in most video games, they breathe underwater effortlessly, swimming past treasures and ruins.  Occasionally a fleck of darker shadow darts past them, a fish, a shark, an illusion of Death.

It’s harder, being in a team of four when the other teams are six—sometimes even bigger.  The bigger teams take down the others by sheer firepower, they climb dizzyingly quick at first.  Kuroo refuses to join them.  Any larger than six, and the teams are volatile, slowly burning themselves from the inside. They sleep with one eye open. As the number of keys wane, the groups collapse onto themselves, stealing, murdering, taking.

The four of them make it though—it’s hard, but they’re good.  Kageyama and Hinata have wild, showy explosives followed by precision cuts.  Their source of energy never seems to run out, and even when they’ve set camp, the two stay outside until dark, inventing new tricks and scouting for hidden items and secret passageways. 

Hinata’s a little reckless sometimes, but he also takes some of the risks with the biggest pay-offs.  Kageyama adapts seamlessly from terrain to terrain, eyes always on the watch for spiders, which he has over time become the best of them at spotting, if not capturing.

At least once a month, Kuroo makes sure they save their game and log out, where they retreat to the facility to rest, breathe and remember that they are not from the world they occupy.  Throughout the days, they catch rumours from the wind, overheard conversations in the ghost corridors of the facility and in-game.  A girl called Michimiya Yui and her Sacrifice sneak around levels, fighting absolutely no one and still climbing steadily.  He hears rumours about the team that has found a way to snatch spiders from even the most cautious players, he hears about the forest fires, the earthquakes, the floods.  He hears horror stories about a Fighter named Ushijima, who destroys everything in his path and is more feared than Death itself.  The rumours breathe of Oikawa and Iwaizumi, the only survivors from any encounter with Ushijima. 

But there is no proof of this.

Of Oikawa Tooru and Iwaizumi Hajime themselves, Kuroo has yet to see them, not in this world, or any other.

 

-

 

In the early fifties, eight months into the game, the landscape is nothing but mountains, rocks and cliffs.  Like the coal mines of the thirties, it’s an upward climb every single day and it’s exhausting.  The sun starts setting earlier, and they turn in with the sunset, unwilling to risk climbing in the dark. 

Kenma starts tracing constellations in the dirt and watching the player database every night.  He looks at rankings and statistics, trying to discern patterns in player activity, geographical location and the ring-match victors.

“Kuroo.”  Kenma says one night, when they are staring at a magnificent sky of a million stars.  “What is the point of this job?”

Kuroo pauses, from where he is trying to form pictures in the roaring fire beside them.  Hinata, lying on his stomach on a picnic blanket, sits up. Kuroo notices the movement and his brain easily distinguishes Hinata as an ally.  It makes Kuroo happy— almost everything has been a threat as of late. 

“The point of this job?  You want to question that now?”  Kuroo asks. 

“No,”  Kenma insists.  “It’s important. When we signed up, what did they say the job was for?”

Hinata tucks himself into a small ball beside his friend.  “Game beta testing.” he says.

“Game beta-testing.”  Kenma agrees.  “It’s been bothering me for awhile.  If they wanted us specifically to find the best Fighter-Sacrifices, wouldn’t they have listed that as the specific job description?”

“Maybe they thought no one would sign up.” Hinata says. 

Kageyama raises his eyebrows.  “And how many people here do you think voluntarily signed up for this?”

Kuroo’s never asked Hinata and Kageyama why they were in the game.  He gets the feeling it’s something none of them would rather talk about.  He lets Hinata’s eyes flicker into something sad, something angry, and diverts his attention back to Kenma.

“What do game beta testers do?”  Kenma asks.  “They explore the game, again, and again, waiting for something to go wrong.  We’re supposed to be here as game beta-players, but there’s nothing wrong with the game.”

“We are looking for bugs, though.”  Kageyama says.  “Literally.”

“Touché.”  Kuroo mutters.

Kenma nods, stretching out against Kuroo. His expression is still troubled. “I don’t know.” He says.  “I keep feeling like there is something more—something wrong.  Something they’re waiting for us to find.”

“Well, it’s a training, though, right? They wanted to know if the game can get people to synchronize to their maximum capability.”  Kuroo says.  It’s so quiet and calm and beautiful here, Kuroo doesn’t want to have to worry.  He pets Kenma’s hair.

“I guess.”  Kenma says uncertainly.  “But why would they do all of this if they just wanted a Fighter-and-Sacrifice pair?  Wouldn’t it be easier if we just fought each other in arenas? Instead they pretend that there are other ways around it, give us these wide empty spaces, other things to fight and do, and they’ve built these detailed worlds around us… but there are really only two ways to win.  One, you find the keys first, two, you make sure the other teams can’t.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting? What am I supposed to do with that?”  Hinata demands. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“I don’t know.”  Kenma says, and Kuroo pulls Kenma closer in lieu of anything to say. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

 

-

 

After they clear the first fifty levels, they save and log out. The safety is a welcome relief, and they’re in the facility for a few days longer during this period, because Hinata is trying a new trick that involves Kageyama yelling at him and them almost coming to blows with each other (or perhaps that’s just a side effect of whatever trick Hinata is trying).

Kenma pours through the same manual that Oikawa and Kuroo had read one of their first nights at the facility, and then he reads it again.  Like Oikawa, he broods incessantly over the book, reading and rereading certain paragraphs, leaving pages dog-eared and words highlighted.

“What are you looking for?”  Kuroo asks, but Kenma shakes his head.

“I don’t know yet.”

And then just as abruptly as he started reading, he stops.  He puts down the book and curls up next to Kuroo.  He doesn’t pick up the book again.  He doesn’t explain.

They spend four nights in the facility, which is as long as they can spare.  On the last night, Kuroo is brushing his teeth when the door creaks open and someone steps in beside him.  Kuroo glances up casually and nearly has a heart attack.

It’s Oikawa.

“You’re alive.”  Kuroo says, because it’s been nearly ten months since he’s seen Oikawa, and the rumours had stopped spreading for awhile.

“So are you.”  Oikawa says amiably, and squeezes toothpaste onto his own toothbrush, and they stand there side by side, watching their reflections do something as mundane as brush their teeth.

Kuroo studies Oikawa thoroughly, seeing the sharper angles to the boy’s face, the lean muscles and the tiny scissor-bug scars all over his arms.  Kuroo stares, because firstly, Oikawa is a Fighter, and as a Fighter Kuroo doesn’t even get his own mosquito bites, and secondly because he doesn’t know anyone who actually carries the injuries from in-game back to the facility. Kuroo still has no clue what Oikawa is doing or how he has survived doing whatever it is he is.

Oikawa’s smile is proud but cold.  With one hand, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out something, placing it on the ledge under the mirror right in front of Kuroo. Kuroo’s eyes widen.

It’s a keychain full of spider keys.

“Why are you doing this?”  Kuroo demands, because, _jesus_ , _there must be at least twenty keys there_ , which means Oikawa has stopped forty people from ascending to the next level for absolutely no reason.  Most of the keys are from the lower levels, but there are a couple from the forties and fifties, and there are people who cannot find a single key and Oikawa is collecting them like trophies. 

Oikawa doesn’t reply.  He rinses his mouth, drops his toothbrush back into his cup and strolls off, leaving the keys lying in front of Kuroo.

 

-

 

Oikawa Tooru doesn’t go back to the ward, but then again even Kuroo almost never does.  Even at the facility, he’s far more comfortable with Kenma, Hinata and Kageyama close by, and they usually camp in one of the secret lounges and rooms.

At breakfast, however, Oikawa and Iwaizumi are sitting at one of the tables right by the door, and Kuroo storms up to them and slams the keys down in front of Oikawa.

“You’re a bastard, you know that?”  Kuroo says.

“A bastard who’s going to win.”  Oikawa says, not bothering to look at Kuroo, picking at his breakfast delicately.

Kuroo shoves the plate of food aside. “What is your problem?” he says.  “What have we done to you?”

“Kuroo, don’t fight, come on—”  Kenma says. 

“No, don’t stop me.”  Kuroo says.  “I want to hear him answer.  I need to hear him answer.  What is wrong with you that you can’t just win, but you need to treat everyone else like they’re rubbish while you’re at it?”

“We didn’t steal those.”  Iwaizumi says, and Oikawa turns to him sharply. “No, Tooru.  He’s going to murder you if you let him think like that.  We did not steal those from the other players or take them just so the others couldn’t, Kuroo-san.”

“Then where the hell did you get that?” Kuroo demands. “There are twenty keys on that thing!  That’s twenty pairs who didn’t even get a chance to try—”

“Twenty-six.  And that was a gift from Ushijima.”  Oikawa interrupts.  He stands.  “It’s not just your team I’m refusing to join, Kuroo-kun, don’t feel so special.”

 Kuroo’s body moves before his mind does, and he grabs Oikawa, shoving him back into the table. 

“Why are you so determined to hate us?” Kuroo hisses.  “I’ve tried being nice to you, I’ve tried to help you, the least you could do is act like a decent human being—”

“Act like a decent human being?”  Oikawa says, his voice raised.  “Think about how you’ve spent the past year. Which part of any of that was you acting like a decent human being?”

“I should kill you.”  Kuroo says, instead of answering.  “Somebody should.  You’re trouble.”

“Try to kill me then.”  Oikawa says, and for some reason it sounds more like a request than a challenge.  Kuroo lets Oikawa go, and instead of fighting, they stand there a moment, just staring at each other.

“I’m not dealing with this.”  Oikawa snaps at Iwaizumi, grabs his Sacrifice and storms out the door.

They don’t see Oikawa Tooru again for a very long time.

 

-

 

Shortly after they pass level sixty, Kenma starts getting nightmares.  None of them are strangers to bad dreams, not anymore, not when they’re literally stuck in one.  There are nights that even Hinata sits up in a panic, breath coming out in shaky exhales, haunted and terrified.  Those days are few, however, whereupon every so often Kenma wakes up with a start, pulse racing and eyes wild, and stares at Kuroo like he cannot recognize him, and then clings to Kuroo, trembling, once he does. 

For some reason, the level seventies brings them back to Tokyo, every inch the city they remember it.  The roads are filled with cars and the streets with pedestrians.  It’s terrifying because it’s more real than anything they’ve seen in almost a year now, and though the people are simulated characters and only say a few sentences at most, it’s more conversation and people than any of them know what to do with. 

They rent an apartment near Tokyo University, and at night when Kuroo watches the cars pass by outside his apartment, he wonders if this could have been them in college.  With the money they’ve collected they get to buy actual food and go to restaurants and even get a change of clothes and daily showers, and when Kageyama finds a spider in the shower they throw themselves a party with cheap sake and takeout sushi.

Even in the city they are cautious, because while ninety percent of the city are stock characters, there are still other players, waiting in the crowd to attack.  In some way it is harder like this, surrounded by people and not knowing who wants you dead and who is just a programmed code.  As good as it sometimes feels to be back in this world, it is exhausting reminding yourself how to live in Tokyo, though not the way you remember it.  

Kuroo sleeps lightly, hearing every person in the apartment building at night and thinking _danger!_ Kenma, asleep in his arms is often restless, and Kuroo doesn’t mind not being able to sleep because it means he can stay up stroking Kenma’s hair gently, holding him close, which allows the younger boy to finally relax.  Sometimes, however, Kuroo wakes just to see Kenma staring at him blankly, and no amount of promises or kisses can calm the younger boy.

“You know I love you, right?”  Kenma whispers into his ear one night, when they are lying awake, Kenma tucked into a tiny ball against Kuroo’s chest.

Kuroo freezes.

“Why—what are you—”  Kuroo says shakily.  The blanket they are under feels too thin, every light reflected in the window too bright.  Kenma’s face is half masked in the shadows.

“I’m sorry you had to come here with me.” Kenma says.

“No.”  Kuroo says, choked.  “Don’t— stop— go back to the part where you love me, Kenma— don’t be sorry, I’m not sorry at all.  I fucking love you, Kenma.”

Kenma smiles, a tiny, precious thing. “Misa Chihiko.” Kenma says.  “She’s Tachibana Yuuri’s Sacrifice. If anything happens to me, if you need a new Sacrifice, Misa-san will go to you if you ask.” 

Kuroo pushes Kenma back, stung.  “What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen Misa-san with Tachibana-san. They don’t get along like they used to.  Misa-san respects you. She noticed you in the game, almost right away.” 

“Why would you tell me something like that?” Kuroo demands, furious. “You just told me you love me, and now you tell me to get a new Sacrifice?”

Kenma shakes his head.  “I’m not telling you to get a new Sacrifice.”  He says quietly.  “I’m just telling you Misa Chihiko is willing to be yours.”

“Is that what you want?”  Kuroo asks.  “Who are you going to Synchronize with?  Have you found someone else, is that what this is?”

A look of stunned hurt crossed Kenma’s face and for a moment Kuroo feels a sick sense of vindication, and a split second later he’s reaching for Kenma, pulling the younger boy back into his arms.

“I’m sorry.”  Kuroo breathes.  “I know you wouldn’t—  I’m so sorry. But why are you telling me this, Kenma?”

“I want you to live.”  Kenma says.  “Even if anything happens to me, Kuroo— I want you to live.”

Kuroo buries his face in Kenma’s shoulder, pressing his hot eyelids into the cotton of the younger boy’s shirt.  Kenma’s shirt is instantly damp.  “If anything happens to you, Kenma, I’ll die with you.” Kuroo says.

“It doesn’t have to be so romantic.” Kenma says.  “You don’t have to.” 

“It’s not whether I have to.”  Kuroo says.  “It’s that I will.  But if you want me to go to Misa Chihiko—”  Kuroo swallows, “I will.”

“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.” Kenma says firmly, and Kuroo pulls back so they can look at each other again, swiping the wetness from his eyes. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to, Kuroo.”

“Kenma.”  Kuroo whispers, only a couple of centimeters between their faces. “I’d do anything you asked me to.”

Kenma squeezes his eyes shut and turns away.

“No.”  Kenma says, and there’s a finality to that Kuroo cannot understand. Instead of keeping himself away though, Kenma turns back to Kuroo, and the weight of that action makes Kuroo’s throat constrict again. 

“Do you want to do what you’re doing now?” Kenma asks.

Kuroo blinks.  “Play the game?  I want to.  I fought my way into this, Kenma.”

“No, Kuroo.  Nevermind me.  What is this game?  Fighting, crawling through hell, stealing, competing for something so important that we’d literally forgo all our values just to get a key?”  Kenma says.  He shudders, turning onto his back.  “Kuroo, we’re terrible people.”

“It’s not like that, Kenma.  We need to survive this.”  Kuroo says, even though perhaps in every apartment building, some Fighter is saying the same thing to his Sacrifice, rendering it untrue. “At least we don’t kill anyone else.” 

“Just not directly.”  Kenma says, and Kuroo can’t argue with that.

“I want us to survive this, Kenma.” Kuroo says, because sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps him going.  By this point he’s conditioned his body to the game and to win so well that it’s automatic, searching for means of victory and cutting out the things that keep them from it, redundant, depressing thoughts one of them.

“This city.”  Kenma says, and his voice is strained.  “We played these levels in Tokyo, even before the game.”

“How many people actually support the New Japan Rule? How many people want to play this game?  It’s the same thing, Kuroo.  Just replace every spider with an assignment ID.  In Japan, you need an assignment ID to survive, right?  So what do you do?  You get a job, you get an ID.  Easy. _But what if they limited the number of IDs?  What if they kept cutting down the number of IDs? What would we do to get one? How far would we go to get one?_ ”

“Stop.”  Kuroo says, but he’s already heard too much.

“I kept thinking, what are they trying to test? The game works fine, it works perfectly.”  Kenma whispers. Kuroo catches him, holds him close. “We’re not playing the game, Kuroo. We _are_ the game.  It’s us they’re trying to test, and we’ve already given them the right answer. In any world, we would do so many things just for a key.  Come on, Kuroo, who are we anymore?  _We’re exactly who they want us to be_.”

“Don’t think like that.”  Kuroo begs.   He trails his lips along the younger boy’s temple, slow and gentle. Kenma tangles their fingers together shakily.

“Why are we still here, Kuroo?”  he asks.

“Don’t.  It doesn’t matter.  We can’t think about this now.”  Kuroo says sharply.  “Hinata’s right, it doesn’t change anything.  We’re going to win this, me and you and Kageyama and Hinata, and some third pair which will probably end up being Oikawa and Iwaizumi, the bastards. You know that, right? The six of us, it’s going to be us.  We’re going to win, Kenma, I promise.” 

Kenma buries his face in Kuroo’s shirt, their roles reversed now.  “Sometimes,” he admits, so softly Kuroo barely hears him, “that’s what I’m afraid of.”

 

-

 

He thinks nothing of it until two months later.

They’re out in the grocery store one night, buying milk and instant noodles, of all things, when the night goes chill and crisp and out of the blue there are two schoolgirls wearing masks and pointing their guns straight at Kuroo.

Players.  Fuck.

For some reason, the first thought that comes to Kuroo’s mind is:  the last time they saved was seven levels ago.

“What do we have here?”  One of them says.  “A Fighter without his Sacrifice?”

Kuroo tries his best not to look over to where Kenma is, crouched down out of sight in the magazine aisle.  Instead he meets their gaze, silently powering up his fastest attack, waiting for the opening to use it.

“Hand over your items.”  The second girl says.  She’s tiny, middle-school at best, but her voice leaves no room for argument.  Kuroo only has a few things in his pockets, which he can spare.  Kenma has everything else— and their key.

He sees movement above their heads and realizes he’s staring at the surveillance footage of the shop.  Kenma is standing just out of sight, but he’s raising something above his head, shoulders back like he does when he’s just about to set.

Kuroo can’t tell what it is, but he can guess.

He looks away from the screen, just in time to see the orange-sized ball take into the air above the girls’ heads. Kuroo sends his knife straight into the middle of the ball, slicing it into half.  Fireworks immediately shoot into the sky, and Kuroo only knows how to avoid them because he’s so used to seeing Kenma practice it.

The whole interior of the shop lights up, cracking loudly.  The floor sizzles under the falling streaks of fire.

Kuroo grabs Kenma and runs.

He moves too quickly.

Exhilarated from their near-escape, Kuroo bursts out into the night, only to find two other girls lying in wait with matching guns. Backup.

The Fighter fires two shots on instinct.

Both bullets hit him squarely in the chest.

Kuroo’s still standing when he lunges for the girl, knocks her out with the barrel of her own gun in one swing and shoots her Sacrifice.  He’s still standing when the two other girls emerge from the shop, weapons raised. He’s still standing when he shoots them too.

It’s in the aftermath that he’s on his knees, Kenma lying flat on his back staring up at Kuroo, breathing heavily. There’s blood all over his shirt, the bullet wounds dark and slick.

“Here.”  Kuroo says, digging through his pockets, tipping Kenma’s head back and making him swallow a potion.  Another. Another.  Kenma drinks two of them and shakily pushes Kuroo’s hand away.  His face is white. He’s not getting better. His life is a blinking red dot, so small Kuroo can’t even be sure it’s there.

Kuroo feels like he’s going to throw up.

“Come on, stay with me.”  Kuroo begs.  “We’ll go get Kageyama and Hinata— we’re only three levels away, just—”  Kuroo doesn’t know what he’s hoping for.  Three levels is a month away, at least.  Even if Kenma doesn’t die tonight, they’re never going to make it. Not when Kenma’s body is already so weak that the potions don’t even make a difference.

It doesn’t stop Kuroo from trying.  He tugs at Kenma gently, trying to lift the younger boy into his arms.  Kenma whimpers, and Kuroo stops.

He killed three girls today, and his best friend is dying.

Kuroo pulls the menu bar up in their heads, hovering the cursor over the very last selection in the menu.  He could log out, but he _can’t_. If he logs out now, neither of them will make it.

Kenma presses something into Kuroo’s hands. The key.

_“Misa Chihiko.” Kenma says.  “She’s Tachibana Yuuri’s Sacrifice. If anything happens to me, if you need a new Sacrifice, Misa-san will go to you if you ask.”_

“Don’t— fuck, Kenma— don’t do this—”

The boy’s pulse stutters.  The convenient store is rattling, pixels crumbling into blackness.  

Kuroo's fingers fumble for the buttons, but even now, he hesitates.

Don't do it!  A voice in the back of his head screams.  You can find a new Sacrifice!  Surely it would be better if at least one of you survived! That’s what Kenma wants— you’ve come so far now— don’t do it!

_“I want you to live.”  Kenma says. “Even if anything happens to me, Kuroo— I want you to live.”_

“I love you.”  He tells Kenma, apropos of nothing.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Kuroo hits the exit key.

 

-

 

Kuroo is slammed back into reality by the abrupt whirl of a game abandoned.  He takes in a choking gulp of air and shoots upright, his shaking hands yanking off the helmet and the wires, lunging to the seat across from him.

It takes two tries for him to unclasp Kenma’s helmet, a lot gentler than he’d been with his own.  His throat is burning, the sight of Kenma’s still body alarmingly similar to the scene in the grocery store. 

A man in a white coat wrestles Kenma from his grip, and Kuroo fights him until he realizes that he’s a doctor. 

“What’s happening?  He’s supposed to be better—why—we logged out—”  The words trip over Kuroo’s tongue. They logged out. He logged them out. Level eighty-seven, and he logged them out without saving.  The keys. Hinata and Kageyama.

“He’ll be okay.”  The doctor says soothingly, but he’s huge and intimidating and when he lifts Kenma, he looks like he could snap the small boy into half with just one move. 

Kuroo stands shakily, trailing after the doctor. “What is wrong with him?” 

“The aftereffects are just taking a bit longer to wear off.  You logged out without warning, and in the shock of his injuries, Kozume’s mind was still attached to the game.  But he’ll be fine!” the doctor assures. ‘We just need to do a routine check-up to make sure everything is the way it should be.”

They reach the hospital ward and the doctor moves to carry Kenma into the room.  Several nurses intercept Kuroo before he can follow.

The doctor places Kenma in bed, golden hair fanning out on the white pillow.  “I wouldn’t recommend going back into the game for the next few days, Kuroo-san. If your Sacrifice goes in with his mind still clouded from the battle, he will simply regain the injuries from before. I will let you know when it is alright to return to the game again.”

The nurses move around Kuroo, slipping into the room and pulling the curtains close.

 “He’ll be fine.”  The doctor says, and with a rushed apology, shuts the door in Kuroo’s face.

 

-

 

Seven levels, Kuroo thinks to himself. He’s sitting in the piano lounge, Kenma’s jacket draped over one knee.  He fucked up.

At level eighty, you couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.  Because he’d been careless, just a moment too slow, he’d let Kenma get hurt, and he also cost them seven levels.  They had been so close.

The glass panels slide open, a cool gust of wind filtering into the room.  Kuroo looks up sharply.

It’s Oikawa and Iwaizumi.  Kuroo tries to stand, and regrets it immediately. His legs give way and he drops back onto the couch, drained. 

“Why are you here?”  Kuroo asks, and grimaces when he hears how accusing it sounds. He palms his temple, wanting to explain himself but unable to find the words.  He can still feel Kenma’s blood on his hands and Kuroo feels that maybe, maybe this really might be the end and it’s fucking heartbreaking.

“It cost you.”  Oikawa says.  “You would have been better off getting a new Sacrifice.  Chihiko-chan’s been tiring of her Fighter. She would have jumped ship to you.”

“Stop telling me that!”  Kuroo says.  “Misa Chihiko isn’t my Sacrifice.  I don’t care what she would or would not do for me.” 

Oikawa’s gaze shifts slightly.  “So you do know about her.”

“Kenma told me.”  Kuroo says, too exhausted to pick a fight with Oikawa.

“He told you about Misa Chihiko and you still logged out for him?  Doesn’t that go against what he’s told you that for?”

“I had to.”  Kuroo says helplessly.  Kuroo says feels like throwing up.  He doesn’t know why Oikawa is in here interrogating him, and he doesn’t know why he’s trying to explain himself.  “He was going to die.”

Oikawa doesn’t say anything to that. Instead he put the mug he is holding down and pushes it towards Kuroo.  “I got that from the kitchens before I came up." 

“I’m still Synchronized.”  Kuroo says looking at the mug, speaking and barely knowing what he’s saying. “If you poison me, it’s Kenma who will die. I don’t know why you hate me, but I know for a fact you like Kenma.”

Kenma, who even Oikawa-fucking-Tooru likes, and Kuroo has ruined him.

There’s a flicker of amusement in Oikawa’s eyes. They’re soft.  To his surprise, Oikawa just sits down on the coffee table in front of him.  “I don’t hate you.”  Oikawa says, at last.

The mug rattles as Oikawa’s knee jostles the table. Oikawa walks with a limp now, even here, and Kuroo doesn’t ask.  Iwaizumi hovers close by his side, eyes steel and cloudy.

“Really.”  Kuroo says disbelievingly, and it comes out as a snarl.  “Forgive me if I don’t believe you’ve had a change of heart all of a sudden." 

“It’s never been my heart that was the problem.” Oikawa says dismissively. “Your Kenma knows why.” 

Kuroo digs his nails into the material of the sofa. “He’s not ‘my’ Kenma, bloody hell Oikawa, if this is you not hating me—”

“You almost let him die.”  Oikawa interrupts.  “I saw you.”

Kuroo feels like he’s been stabbed.

He sucks in a deep breath.  Oikawa knows.  Jesus.  No wonder Oikawa hates him.

His desperate, clumsy logout echoes in his head, the crushing contradiction between saving his game progress or his Sacrifice. He’s been playing this game for too long now, every part of his body and mind ingrained into doing whatever it took to keep climbing that for a second his brain had fought the logout, demanding he stay put, demanding he fought, not fled, even though he’d known he would have lost Kenma.

The guilt makes him sick.  The realization that the game is changing him, exactly the way Kenma said it was, makes him sicker.

 “I don’t know why you think it matters.” Oikawa continues ruthlessly. “It doesn’t matter how much you love him if you’re both going to die.”

“We’re still playing.”  Kuroo says, eyes narrowing at Oikawa.  “Don’t think we’re dead yet.”

Oikawa tosses his hair back.  It’s still in the same short, bouncy curls as it had been when Kuroo first met him, although a little rougher, meaner now. Kuroo absently wonders if he gets Iwaizumi to cut it for him.  Kuroo cuts his own, but at least his hair had always been unruly.

“Seven levels.”  Oikawa tuts. 

“I’m not giving up.”  Kuroo says to Oikawa, voice hoarse.  He doesn’t know how they even stand a chance now, but he’s not giving up.  Not ever. He clears his throat. “We’re not.  So fuck off and play your game.”

He expects Oikawa to be angry, and he’s full of so much raw grief and anger that he’s ready for the fight, but instead—

“Good.”  Oikawa says, and Kuroo blinks.

“Drink your tea, Kuroo.”  Oikawa says, stands up and leaves. 

 

-

 

For the two longest days of Kuroo's life, he waits.  "He's doing well,"  the doctor says, whenever he finds Kuroo prowling the corridors outside the infirmary, "we're just waiting for the clear to let you back into the game in full health.  Don't worry.  Why don't you go get some proper rest?"

Kuroo's tried, but his dreams are restless, and he wakes up more tired than when he first went to bed.  He wanders the facility like they did that first week, finding more hidden doors and passages that they'd missed before.  But without Kenma, Kuroo walks aimlessly, alone, lost and weary.  He sees nothing of Hinata or Kageyama, and can't stop wondering how they are doing, if they think Kuroo and Kenma are dead, or if they know Kuroo's logged out.  Either way, they do not appear in the facility to check, perhaps preoccupied with hunting the remaining spiders or miles from a feasible save point.  Wherever they are, Kuroo hopes they're okay.  He hopes they'll find solace in the extra blankets and food back in the apartment, hopes someone has cleaned up the half-eaten sandwich Kuroo had shoved hastily into the refrigerator before they left, three days ago.  Oikawa and Iwaizumi stayed briefly, never approaching Kuroo again, but soon disappeared back into the game. Everywhere Kuroo turns, there are empty walls and empty chairs.

Kuroo spends some of his time with Suga and Sawamura, who seem to have little to do now that their halls are devoid of people, and can be found in secret rooftop gardens and behind secret bookshelves in the library, pressed together, talking in low voices.  Suga’s face has turned drawn and his eyes sad from watching his wards grow emptier and his hallways more quiet, but he still always manages a smile for Kuroo.  Sawamura just watches and says nothing.

Kuroo’s having lunch one afternoon, two other pairs sitting as far as possible from each other in the cafeteria, their numbers reminding Kuroo all the more that he’s missing someone, when the doors swing open with a bang.

Kuroo’s head jerks up in surprise, and his mouth goes slack.  It’s Hinata, Kageyama, Oikawa and Iwaizumi. 

“What—”  Kuroo begins warily as all four of them approach his table and stand around him. Hinata and Kageyama look absolutely exhausted, heavy circles lining their eyes as though Oikawa’s quiet darkness is rubbing off on them.

“What are you doing here?”  Kuroo asks, blinking at the sight.  He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Kageyama and Oikawa stand side by side, ever, but they are now.  To be honest, it’s almost frightening.

So preoccupied with that sight, Kuroo doesn’t notice Hinata until he steps up and drops a thin, black key down in front of Kuroo. 

“We got one back for you.”  Hinata says, and it’s true.  Somehow, they’ve gotten Kuroo a key and Oikawa even brought it out to the real world for him.  The key is thin and spindly, and it feels alive in Kuroo's hands.  Kuroo closes his fingers over it, almost expecting one of them to snatch it back, but no one does.

“Keep going.”  Hinata says, eyes fiery.  “It’s not over yet.”

 

 

-

 

Their new team is unstoppable.  As Kageyama had expected, Oikawa and Iwaizumi are a dangerous pair to be reckoned with, ruthless and powerful, destroying everything in sight without hesitation.

The last ten levels are Tokyo city again, but a ghost of its usual bustle.  The streets are empty and the signboards all black.  In shop windows, mannequins lie naked on the ground, display cabinets full of shards of glass.  Overhead, the sky remains dull and grey, twenty-four hours of a colourless sunset. Kuroo sleeps, Kuroo wakes, the sky remains the same.  Clouds of fog hang low in the city, and even the smallest noise sounds like thunder.

Oikawa is dangerous, but he’s also a saint after Kuroo’s own heart.  They find boxes of chalk in empty cupboards and go back to the very beginning, writing and deciphering spell after spell with an unmatched dedication.  For weeks they work themselves to the point of near madness, and then one morning Kuroo wakes up and Oikawa has chalked the whole street with stick figures holding hands, triangle-roofed houses, five-striped rainbows and gaudy yellow suns.

Kuroo spends the next night adding inappropriate speech bubbles and dialogue between all Oikawa’s drawings, and Oikawa just draws more dancing bears and UFOs and huge fishing nets.  It’s ridiculous, as if they don’t have other things to be doing, as if there aren’t two other teams out there, selling their souls for the remaining three keys, but it helps them to breathe. It helps them remember that somewhere, there’s life that doesn’t thrive on death and destruction.

Somewhere after their third month there and level ninety-four, Kuroo finds Oikawa sitting alone watching their stash of dwindling rations, his thoughts far away in some distant place Kuroo dares not venture.  Sighing, Kuroo noisily makes his way towards the other boy, making his presence impossible to ignore. Kuroo gets right up to the cliff, putting himself right in Oikawa’s line of sight. 

“Bugger off, Kuroo.”  Oikawa says, lifting a finger to flip him off, but there’s no malice in it.  Oikawa blinks, eyes not so far away anymore.

Kuroo picks at a bit of dried fruit, tearing off pieces and chewing.  “Hinata and Kenma think they’ll manage to capture another key by next week.”  He says.  The fruit is dusty and bitter, but it won’t kill him, which is something to be thankful for.

Oikawa reaches for a bread roll, more rubber than food at this point and scratches at it with dirty fingernails. “If I were them, I’d worry about getting rid of Ushiwaka’s and Michimiya’s Sacrifices first.”

Kuroo frowns at that.  “Michimiya’s a nice girl.”

“Probably not,”  Oikawa retorts, “If she’s gotten this far.”

Kuroo doesn’t care for that train of thought. After months of trying to convince Kenma not to think himself to ruin, Kuroo refuses to let their sins drag them down.  They’ve all done bad things here, Kuroo knows none of that are exempt from their share of demons, but Kuroo doesn’t mind so much because it’s brought all of them here, to this point.

“Don’t you wish we teamed up earlier?” Kuroo asks, stretching out against expanse of sky.  He feels so light and carefree, on top of the world.  It’s stupid, he knows, but at times like this it feels like they’ve already won, like nothing else can stand in their way because it’s them, and they’re indestructible. 

Something bounces off the back of his head. Kuroo turns, and Oikawa is staring innocently at the ration pile.  Kuroo’s about to pick up the bread and throw it back at Oikawa when he sees something far more entertaining.  He smirks, and Oikawa looks confused for all of one second before someone shows up right behind him and cuffs the back of his neck.

“How many times did I warn you about wasting food?” Iwaizumi snarls.

“Nobody would have eaten that!”  Oikawa protests.  “It was a bouncing roll of bread, Hajime!” but Iwaizumi knocks him flat into the dirt anyway.

Simply to add insult to injury, Kuroo reaches out to grab the roll of bread and serves it straight into the side of Oikawa’s face. Iwaizumi snorts, and only looks amused.  Oikawa splutters indignantly, and Kuroo bursts out laughing. 

Oikawa laughs with him.

 

-

 

The 99th floor is an exact replica of the first, and Kuroo stares at it, thinking _cycles_. The buildings have gotten increasingly shorter and less dense with each level, and by the time they’re at the 99 th floor with two keys in their possession, Kuroo feels an odd sense of calm wash over him.  Through ash-grey trees with no leaves, they go through the now dead forest and make their way back to the village to look for the last spider, because if the game designers are going to match beginnings with ends, there’s no place more poetic for the last key to be than the very place they first appeared.

There are scuffed footprints all over the village. Hinata is building new trails, trekking circles in the dirt and sand, tapping ‘x’ on every locked door. Kageyama follows behind him, looking like at any moment he’s expecting someone to jump out from behind the locked door and kill them all.

Kuroo leaves them to it, choosing instead to wander through the barren birch trees.  Kenma follows behind him, about fifty information tabs pulled up and not even looking where he’s going.  About ten minutes into the forest, Kuroo finds a pure white apple at the bottom of a tree. 

“Kuroo, stop!”  Kenma shouts, and Kuroo spins around, sensing movement and finds himself mere inches from Michimiya Yui and her Sacrifice.  Both girls are wild-looking, painted with white streaks of powder, crouched among the branches of the tree, waiting.

“We just need one key.”  Michimiya says, and Kuroo sees the knife come streaking down towards him.

 

-

 

“Fuck.”  Kuroo says, taking off at a sprint after the two white figures. The impact of each pounding footstep against the ground seems to rattle his entire body.  His heart is fluttering wildly in his chest, searching for Kenma’s heartbeat and finding nothing.

“Kuroo, Synchronize!”  Kenma shouts from somewhere behind him, but Kuroo ignores him and keeps running.  His entire frame is trembling from exertion, but the warm tingling feeling in his limbs feels a lot like relief.

“Kuroo!”  Kenma’s hand grazes his elbow, and Kuroo realizes he’s slowing down.  He speeds up. “Kuroo, what do you think you’re going to do if you catch them if you’re not Synchronized?”

“Give me like five seconds, okay—”  Kuroo says, darting in between trees and seeing Michimiya Yui reappear in his field of vision.  “I’m not letting you almost die for me again!”

Kenma lets out a sound of disapproval. “We’re going to have to actually fight her to survive, Kuroo—”

“Later!”  Kuroo throws backwards.  He doesn’t trust Michimiya to not be able to attack, even at this distance.

“Kuroo—”  the rest of Kenma’s sentence is cut off with a surprised yelp. Hinata leaps into pace beside them, calling, “Ushijima’s in the village!  He’s fighting with Oikawa!”

“Jesus.”  Kuroo says, and he’s so surprised he actually stops running.

They're all here now.  The remaining five teams are all in the village. As blood rushes through his ears, the adrenalin abruptly dies down and Kuroo feels like he’d been sliced into half by Michimiya’s knife.

“You’re bleeding!”  Hinata exclaims, and Kuroo shakes his head.  A moment later, a cool liquid trickles down his back, and Kuroo realizes that Kenma just doused him with a potion.

“What the—”  Kuroo says as he looks down at his shoulder, because if it’s a potion they need more of that.  The wound has healed completely.

“Kenma!”  he hears Hinata gasp, and turns just in time to see Kenma double over in pain, shoulder ripped to shreds.  Blood spills to the ground as he sinks to his knees, fingers gripped against Hinata’s shirt and dragging the orange-haired boy down with him.

“What did you do?”  Kuroo asks, horrified.  He’s never heard of Sacrifices taking old wounds from their Fighters, much less Sacrifices who weren’t even Synchronized.

“I’m okay!”  Kenma says.  He isn’t. “Go stop Michimiya! They’ll kill Oikawa if they she takes him by surprise!”

Kuroo presses a hand to his temple. He loves too many people in this fucking arena.

“Stay with him!”  he shouts at Hinata, and before his mind is made up he’s already running back towards the village.

 

-

 

Ushijima kills Michimiya’s Sacrifice first.

Kuroo hears the screams before he even reaches the clearing, and when he gets there Michimiya is flat on the dirt, hands fumbling over her Sacrifice’s body, making the keening noise of a small animal being slaughtered. Several feet away, Iwaizumi’s is limply thrown across a splintered horse-cart.  Kageyama is kneeling beside the older boy, trying to move him out of harm’s way.

“Stop screaming!!”  Oikawa is yelling at Michimiya, but she doesn’t, and the sounds of both their voices rake under Kuroo’s skin like thin fingernails to a chalkboard. There’s a booming crackle of thunder overhead even though the sky is clear, and it doesn’t stop. Between it all, Kuroo’s ears are ringing as he runs over to help Kageyama, both hands clapped over his ears.

The ground is thick like drying cement, and every footstep Kuroo takes reverberates a slick, wet noise into the village, which in turn echoes all around them.  There’s too much noise, too much happening.

“What is that?”  Kuroo yells, and the village shutters are all slamming now, open close, open close, although there’s no wind and seriously, what in the world—

“Tooru.”  Iwaizumi says, and Kuroo nearly drops him in surprise. Iwaizumi pushes Kuroo aside, swaying on his feet but taking off towards his Fighter anyway.

Oikawa’s arms are raised, and he’s shouting something else, attacks that Kuroo cannot hear over the sound of the whole village creaking, and cracking, and dying.  Streaks of blue and gold light race ahead on the dry clearing, burning Ushijima from the ground up.

Iwaizumi yanks Oikawa back just as Ushijima looks up with a creepy smile and removes Michimiya’s head from her body and feeds both to the flames.  Ushijima doesn’t burn, only watches, the embers reflected on his face dancing blue and orange.

Kuroo sinks to his knees and promptly throws up.

There’s still no wind, but the shutters continue slamming erratically, loose tiles and brick dancing across the ground like autumn leaves kicked up in the wind.

“Is that Oikawa?”  Kuroo asks in disbelief, and Kageyama shrugs a shoulder.

Oikawa kills the flames all at once. The ground beneath Ushijima is burnt black, and the village seems unnaturally muted without the flickering lights. In the absence of the fire, Kuroo then sees Ushijima’s Sacrifice, or what remained of him.

Kuroo stands, forcing himself to go over to the charred ground, where Ushijima, Iwaizumi and Oikawa are now standing over three dead bodies.  Iwaizumi looks like a standing corpse himself. 

“Step out of the circle.”  Ushijima says to him.  “I am not interested in you.”

Kuroo tries to smirk.  “No, I don’t think so.”  He tells Ushijima.  “You’re outnumbered.”

“It doesn’t matter the number.”  Ushijima says.  “ I don’t need a Sacrifice to win.  In any case, I hear Oikawa knows how to switch from Fighter to Sacrifice.  Don't you?”

He rakes a hand across Oikawa’s face, and the wound stays.  Blood drips down the bridge of his nose, onto his lips.  Ushijima’s smile is sharp and pleased.  Kuroo doesn’t know why Oikawa doesn’t fight back.

Instead, Oikawa tilts his head up and laughs.

Ushijima pauses.

Death shows up.

 

-

 

In the split second that Ushijima is distracted by the looming black figure, Oikawa seizes both Iwaizumi and Kuroo and runs. The delay that Oikawa had saved them from takes its toll on Ushijima.  At the center of the village, in a ring of charred dirt, Ushijima is slowly ripped to pieces by the Grim Reaper.

There’s blackness everywhere, slime and ashes and smoke.  In the pool of black blood gathering around Ushijima, Kuroo notices something moving at a faster pace than the rest, instantly recognizing it and grabbing Oikawa’s wrist.

“Yeah.”  Oikawa breathes, and there's really nothing more to say.  

This is it.  The last spider.

Death stands, leaving Ushijima writhing on the ground. There’s something shiny beneath the cloak, something gold and glinting, and as Death walks, showers of golden glitter fall from the soft black exterior.

It’s terrifying, but it’s beautiful.

And the Kuroo catches sight of something more terrifying. A flash of orange hair, emerging from the opposite end of the clearing. 

Kageyama takes off at a run.  The gold dust rattles against the ground.

Kuroo’s fingers just barely miss the material of Kageyama’s shirt.

“Wait, come back—”  Kuroo hisses, letting his hand fall into the rapidly cooling dirt instead.  The temperature has dropped and Kuroo doesn’t remember when it started falling. 

“Hinata isn’t stupid, where does Tobio-chan think he’s going?”  Oikawa mutters. 

Neither are stupid. 

Hinata leaps into motion at the same time as Kageyama, and on either side of Death, mere feet away, they run in opposite directions, so quickly that all Kuroo sees is a flash of orange and black. The black smoke lifts from Death’s coat, rising in a cloud.  Death rattles its arms, fighting against the momentum.

“Hinata, now!”  Kenma’s voice cuts through the hushed silence.

In slow motion, Kuroo watches as Hinata slashes a knife mercilessly into his own arm, flicking the wound towards Death, but instead of blood, he sends a spray of tempered glass into the air that just… freezes. Stops.  In midair.

Death stops too, head half-turned to the sound of Kenma’s voice.

Kuroo suddenly doesn’t even remember how to breathe.

Hinata steps into the circle and picks the spider off the ground.

He steps out. 

Kageyama shouts, and everything goes white.

 

- 

 

When Kuroo’s vision returns to him, his eyes immediately find Hinata lying on the ground in a crumpled heap, Kageyama’s body thrown over him.  Neither are moving. Kuroo tears his gaze away. 

“Where is the spider?”  Kuroo asks, already knowing and dreading the answer.

Oikawa raises his hand and points.  The glass circle is gone, and Death paces the ground, just as the first few snowflakes fall from the sky.

Kuroo is staring at the gold dust on the black and white ground.  There’s something in the back of his mind that’s bothering him about it all.

_“Climb the golden ladder, beneath the cloak of death…_

A cold hand touches his elbow and Kuroo jumps a foot in the air.  Kenma lifts an eyebrow at him.  “The weak point is under the neck.”  He tells Kuroo.

“Why are you here?”  Kuroo demands, and Kenma lets out a tiny snort.

“Where is the neck?”  Oikawa asks, reaching around Kuroo to tap Kenma on the shoulder. “How do we get to it?”

Kenma shakes his head.  “Nobody mentioned it.”

Oikawa curses, ducking back out of sight as Death turns again.  Kuroo doesn’t know what Death thinks it is doing, turning circles in the center of the village; it’s ominous, almost like a ritual.  Surely it knows where they are.  Why isn’t it attacking? 

“Climb the golden ladder, beneath the cloak of death.” Kuroo murmurs helplessly under his breath.  What is that? Where does he remember that from?

He looks up to find Kenma and Oikawa staring at him. 

“What is that?”  Oikawa asks.

Kuroo holds his hands up.  “I don’t know.  It’s a poem, or a song, I’ve heard it somewhere ‘ _Climb the golden ladder, beneath the cloak of death, my friend I’ll grant your wishes…_ ’”

“ _…sleep soundly in a breath_.”  Kenma finishes. His face is flushed. “I know that song too.”

Oikawa’s gaze is hard.

“Oh my God.”  Kuroo says suddenly.  “It’s the song Suga sang to you while you were in the hospital. It’s the song he used to hum to us before the games even began.  Jesus Christ." 

Something whizzes past his head.  The sharp sting of pain reminds Kuroo that he’s not Synchronized.  He whirls around.

Death is lifting a whole house into the sky when he chances a look back.

“Get down!”  Oikawa shouts at him, sprinting across courtyard, yanking Kenma with him.

“Kuroo, Synchronize me already!”  he hears Kenma shout. 

A hand grabs him by the back of his jacket, dragging him across the ground and dropping him behind a large slab of rock. Sparks fly over his head, disintegrating in the concrete, leaving black scorch marks in their wake. Iwaizumi is tugging at his arm, and Kuroo understands just enough to throw up a shield over them just as another boulder crashes over their heads.

As the rocks shower down above their heads, Kuroo remembers the next verse:

 

_“Climb the golden ladder,_

_Beneath the cloak of death,_

_My friend I’ll grant your wishes,_

_Sleep soundly in a breath._

 

_Two may walk beneath the arch,_

_Two must play the game._

_But in twenty steps a choice will bring_

_Only one can cut the string.”_

 

Gripping Iwaizumi’s wrist tightly, he recites it to the Sacrifice, his mind racing.

“What does that mean?”  Iwaizumi demands, while at the same time shouting over his head, “Tooru!”

“It means a pair needs to go under the cloak. It needs a Sacrifice— the string of life, someone needs to cut it— a Sacrifice—”  Kuroo freezes.  He looks over to where Oikawa and Kenma are crouched. Kenma has instinctively thrown up an identical shield to Kuroo’s, and the sight makes Kuroo’s heart twist painfully.

“What?”  Iwaizumi says urgently.

 Kuroo swallows.  “It’s a trade.  In order to kill Death, the Fighter needs to give up their Sacrifice.”

 Kuroo's hands are shaking.  He feels like he’s drowning.

“Kenma-chan!”  Oikawa shouts, “Synchronize!”  and through a haze of confusion, Kuroo thinks, _what the hell?_

But Kenma’s voice resounds, clearly, “Oikawa Tooru, Synchronize accept!”

“Shit.”  Iwaizumi says roughly, pushing Kuroo off him, scrambling to his feet.

There’s too much distance between them. Oikawa disappears into the cloak of Death, taking Kenma with him.

Kuroo’s arm slams into the ground as he sprints towards the cape, but before he can reach it, everything vanishes.

“Tooru!”  Iwaizumi shouts.

There’s no one to reply.

 

- 

 

Kuroo doesn’t kill Iwaizumi.  He doesn’t even move.

He stays where he’s fallen onto his knees, surrounded by bodies, gold dust, snow and black blood.

He trusted Oikawa Tooru.  He was the one who invited him to the team. He was the one who’d ignored all of Kageyama’s suspicions; he was the one who refused to listen to even Oikawa’s warnings. 

“I should kill you.”  Kuroo had said, but he hadn’t. 

The snow glitters beneath Kuroo’s clenched fists, and Kuroo realizes he’s crying.  A second tear joins the first.

“I should hate you.”  Kuroo chokes out.  Iwaizumi is standing in the snow a few feet away.  He doesn’t reply.  Kuroo swipes furiously at the tears, his chest heaving.  “I should want to kill you, but I don’t. I can’t even hate you. I just feel so... defeated.”

Kuroo has a key in his pocket.  He knows Iwaizumi is carrying one too. For all he knows, Hinata and Kageyama are dead.  If Oikawa doesn’t return, by default, it’s the both of them who win, and they aren’t even Synchronized.

Iwaizumi’s voice is quiet when he says, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to kill him if he comes out alive.” Kuroo says.

Iwaizumi’s shoes crunch against the snow, and presently he kneels down beside Kuroo in front of the Death’s circle. “I think,”  Iwaizumi says, “If he had to choose between himself and Kenma, Tooru would sacrifice himself.”

“What does that even mean?”  Kuroo snaps.  “I’ve been teammates with you guys for more than four months and I still don’t know what your game is!  You take damage, Oikawa takes damage, and half the time neither of you even know what you’re fighting for.”

“Tooru is stubborn.”  Iwaizumi says, and hell if that doesn’t deserve a printed understatement of the year award.  Kuroo’s so caught off guard that he actually laughs.  Iwaizumi glances at him.

“Tooru’s been… _working_ on this for a very long time.”  Iwaizumi says.  “He needed a way for Sacrifices to be able to play the game without being at risk. He wanted a way for Fighters to take damage.  He was looking for a way to make a team strong, without making one person weak.”

In spite of himself, Kuroo turns to look at Iwaizumi.

“I guess I didn’t understand.  I couldn’t do it.  I wanted to protect him.”  Iwaizumi says.

In the stillness that follows, the ground starts rumbling.  White smoke billows from the crack in the burnt ashes, where Death had disappeared.

“Pick up your weapon, Kuroo.”  Iwaizumi says.  He gets to his feet, brushing snow off his jacket.  “They’re coming back to us.”

 

-

 

Death rises for the very last time above a small white village, in a game, in a secret facility on a hill in the middle of nowhere.  The sparks of light are blinding, and Kuroo finds a hand on his shoulder.

It’s Hinata.

“Let me do it again.”  The boy says.  “I’ll make him stay this time.”

Kuroo nods, and Hinata slowly moves back towards the crater, scraping at his arm as though it is made of glass.  Kageyama follows, sprinkling the tiny, sparkling shards in a circle around the dirt.  As Hinata walks, his steps leave feathered wings in the dirty snow, on either side of his footprints.  Hinata is the only one of them who still leaves beautiful things in his wake.

Slower this time, Hinata builds a magical fence around Death.  There’s a high-pitched, eerie noise as Death rattles against the binds, bringing down shards of glass and rock and fire, raising a cloud of dust and smoke.  Still standing tall in the black and white smoke, Death stumbles.

Kuroo knows immediately that it is his turn now.

“Iwaizumi, Synchronize!”  Kuroo shouts.  He doesn’t wait to hear a reply; he’s halfway into the circle when a strong rush of power sweeps through his body.  Through it, he can feel Iwaizumi at his back.

That’s it, Kuroo thinks, and swings with both their powers combined.

He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, hands plunged straight into the heart of Death, fighting, resisting. Light pours in all around them and Kuroo cannot see past it.  Instead he closes his eyes, leaning into the frigid, smoky form, and then slices right through it.

Kuroo’s hands are burning when he drops to the floor.

He blinks, letting his vision focus again, and then doesn't believe it when it does. The entire village is shattered, straw roofs and brick alike all fallen in, planks of woods left in splinters. Kuroo stands and stumbles.

Iwaizumi catches him.

“Did they—”  Kuroo begins.  He’s too afraid to finish the sentence.

Someone staggers out of the dust, coughing, and Kuroo recognizes the wild orange hair, white with dust.  Kageyama’s not far behind, and makes sure his Sacrifice is lying down safely before motioning for Kuroo and Iwaizumi to follow him back into the smoke.

“Oikawa!  Kenma!”  Kageyama shouts with reckless abandon.  But then again, why shouldn’t he:  Ushijima and Michimiya are both dead.  Death is dead. 

The thought shakes Kuroo back to reality.

“Kenma!”  Kuroo yells.  Iwaizumi is not far behind him, pulling aside planks and stones and starting a small avalanche.

Kuroo takes a deep breath, cutting the Synchronization with Iwaizumi off. 

He needs to look for his Sacrifice. 

Kuroo scans the tiny swirls of smoke, rising in little wind tunnels that poof into nothing.  It’s not dangerous, just calm.  Kuroo breathes.  Kenma is somewhere here.  Kenma has to be somewhere here. 

He catches sight of a flash of teal and spins around. Oikawa is half-hidden under a slab of stone, saved only by another fallen pillar.  Kuroo ducks under the stone, taking in Oikawa’s pale, still face, covered in dust, soot and blood.

“Oikawa!”  he hisses, before raising his voice to call to Iwaizumi and Kageyama. He’s on his knees, trying to ease Oikawa out of the crevice, and finds his hands warm with blood. There’s a widening bloodstain above his heart, the wound ragged and grotesque.  What the hell?

Oikawa stirs slightly as Iwaizumi drops to a crouch beside them.  His eyelids flutter, and then he squints at Kuroo.  “Is Kenma-chan okay?”  he asks drowsily.

“I can’t find—”  Kuroo begins, and then stops, because when Iwaizumi shifts his Fighter, Kuroo sees Kenma shielded behind Oikawa’s body.  Kuroo’s throat feels dry.  He reaches for Kenma and finds a matching wound on the younger boy’s chest, bloody beyond recognition. Kuroo’s hand darts out to feel Kenma’s pulse, and Kenma’s head lolls backwards limply.  The action reveals the third key hanging around Kenma’s neck.

“You’re both alive.”  Kuroo says in disbelief. 

Oikawa flaps a hand at Kuroo, perhaps a greeting, perhaps a dismissal.  “You’re not the onl-y one Sugawara sings lullabies to, you know.”

“Only one can cut the string.”  Kuroo says.  “How did you kill Death without a Sacrifice?”

“There was a Sacrifice.”  Oikawa says, too delirious to pretend he doesn’t care. “There have been too many.”

“You’re incredible.”  Kuroo says.  “You split it.  You split the sacrifice.”

Oikawa’s glare is chilling.  “As should everyone else!  In a normal world, where normal people take their own damage for their mistakes!”

Iwaizumi sighs, draping Oikawa’s arm over his shoulder and carefully pulling his Fighter from the rubble, making him drink a vial of elixir.  Oikawa mumbles incoherently, and Iwaizumi lingers at Oikawa’s wounds as they heal, hands hovering with no place to go.

Kuroo carries Kenma out of the crevice, gently pouring another potion down his throat, and the boy stirs just as Kageyama and Hinata come around the corner.

“Kuro?”  Kenma blinks.  His hands immediately go to the key around his neck.

“Yeah.”  Kuroo says, bending over so their foreheads touch.  “You’re okay.”

Kenma’s head whips around, and he sinks back into Kuroo with relief when he sees Oikawa sitting up by Iwaizumi.  Oikawa smiles tiredly, his expression gentle, the way he never ever smiles at Kuroo, but Kuroo finds he doesn’t mind. 

“You did it.”  Kenma says.

“I had help.”  Oikawa replies, fingers curling around Iwaizumi's wrist, leaving a pink handprint in the dust gathered over Iwaizumi's skin. Oikawa looks back at Kuroo, and slowly lets his gaze trail to Hinata and Kageyama.  “We had a lot of help.”

Kuroo finds himself grinning so wide his mouth hurts. They have it now: level ninety-nine and all three keys.  Beaming like an idiot, Kuroo rocks forward and kisses Kenma’s forehead and then, because he’s so happy, leans over and kisses Oikawa on the cheek.

“Thank you.” He murmurs, and Oikawa grins.

“Hajime, are you jealous?”  Oikawa says brightly.  He’s still a little unfocused, but the anger is slowly melting away, something softer taking over his face.  “I’ll let you kiss my lips.”

“Oh my God, you’re such an idiot.”  Iwaizumi says, and does exactly that.

 

-

 

In the dusty ruins of the village they climb to their feet, door ninety-nine so close now, just a few steps a way.

Kuroo turns to his team, five people he will never get over for as long as he lives.

Hinata envelopes Kenma in a tight hug and Kenma returns it. Iwaizumi is brushing his thumb over Oikawa’s knuckles in a soothing gesture, more tender than either of them have allowed anyone else to witness before.

Kuroo takes a deep breath, and he feels Kenma return to his side.  Kuroo presses his chin on the top of the younger boy's head.  With a steady hand, Kenma lifts the key from around his neck, placing it into the keyhole.  There is a long silence, then a click.

The door swings open into the light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
   
_Climb the golden ladder,_  
_Beneath the cloak of death,_  
_My friend I’ll grant your wishes,_  
_Sleep soundly in a breath._  
  
_Two may walk beneath the arch,_  
_Two must play the game._  
_But in twenty steps a choice will bring_  
_Only one can cut the string._  
  
_All rivers run to rivers_  
_No ocean runs too deep_  
_Choose wise your friends_  
_Choose wise your foes_  
_And may those you love,_ _you keep._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author end notes [here](http://minijhi.tumblr.com/post/115124318758/limit-thank-you-so-much-for-reading-this-is-the).


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